Dead Man Walking
by Kitty Smith
Summary: Harry's lived a long life. A good life. He's ready to go, but like all bureaucracies, Death's a little behind on their paperwork. He'll be fine in a temporary storage track, right? AU Epilogue-compliant WARNINGS: ineffective suicide(s), light gore, swearing, off-kilter humor, sort of dark!Harry, sort of time travel
1. Chapter 1

**WARNINGS: Some gore, references to suicide, suicidal thoughts and behaviors, actual suicide, off-kilter humor, bad humor, possible triggers**

**Please do not ever, ever kill yourself. :)**

**Alright.**

**Or anyone else.**

**Unless you have to.**

**Uh.**

**Disclaimer: This story falls under fair use, as, technically, my writing is but a parody of Madame Rowling's; I make no money nor do I receive any compensation for this use, and all rights are to their original owners as I am to my dearest friends: owned.**

**Begin!**

Harry smiled contentedly even as his youngest son, Albus, cradled his withered hand in his own and his daughter Lily sobbed openly. His family- those left of the Weasleys and his children, nieces, nephews, grandchildren- was gathered around him, and the faces he was missing were the ones he'd soon be seeing. Harry let his eyes flutter shut with a little sigh; an involuntary expulsion of air as he lost muscular control and his face went slack along with the rest of his body. Soon, he lost track of what was physical and felt a floating sensation as gravity released its power over him, but nothing else. Harry didn't fight, didn't try to wrest back the sight, sound, _sensation,_ he was leaving behind. After more than a hundred years, Harry was _ready_ to go.

"I'm afraid I can't let you do that."

A spike of panic rent through what was left of him.

The voice, unidentifiable even as it slipped through the cracks in his memory and rolled away, slid on, "You're not up yet. I can't take you _back_."

Paper rustled and a pen scribbled madly across it.

"I'll just send you off for now."

_But I was _ready! Harry's spirit shrieked soundlessly, every bit of its existence writhing in rage and fear.

The pen slapped a desk with finality, "Yes, Mr. Potter, but _we _are not ready for _you_."

And sensation returned.

Harry slammed his undersized fists weakly against a familiar wooden floor in delayed rebellion. _Is this a coffin?_ A spider crawled over his hand and he sat up. It had too much space to be a coffin and was shaped differently. _It's a staircase, dumbass, _his Common Sense provided flatly. The hypothesis was proved not soon after as feet pounded like thunder down the stairs, spraying his face and shoulders with dust. Harry scowled with tightly closed lips and brushed off as much as he could.

"Mummy! I want to eat breakfast!"

_No._ Harry had never wanted to hear that voice again. He could recognize that whining drivel anywhere. How could he _possibly_ be back with the _Dursleys_? Was it something like a spirit Pensieve? Or some sort of purgatory, maybe, where he was to relive the worst moments of his life to pay for his trespasses? Or…

'_Send you off for now,' that voice had said. _Could it be they'd put him back into his body? Decades off, to be sure, but he supposed a few decades wouldn't make much difference to whatever governed life and death. It was preposterous, impossible, crazy. _Bad things happen to wizards who mess with time_, Harry remembered with a painful fondness, Hermione's gorgeously wrought coffin flickering through his memory, as quickly there as it was gone. If he _was_ back in time, it might explain why he appeared to have suddenly become a midget. It had to be pre-Hogwarts from the looks of his "bedroom." Would whatever powers that put him here take him back soon?

"Boy! Sunlight's wasting!"

He couldn't relive this; go through the war, find Ginny, raise his kids- His kids. _Oh no,_ Harry felt his head drop into his too-small hands, tiny fingers curling in his hair. Those strange powers didn't seem to have a problem dropping him in the past, so he doubted they'd care to keep the time stream consistent. Even if it all went as it had, how could the same genetic combination result in his children again? It was a one in a million chance he got them in the first place. Were they... just gone? Had they never existed? Were even their souls… "No," he whimpered, voice the tinny prepubescent squeak of pain he remembered from his youth and it pushed the spike deeper into him. The very idea of Lily, Albus, and James just… Vanishing... It opened a hole in his chest beyond what he'd felt in his time on this planet, a gaping void that gasped hungrily, ferociously, and he hardly noticed the sharp tap of no-nonsense kitty heels against the linoleum. A quick _rap-rap-rap-rap_ shook the door in its holdings and the man from his thoughts.

"Harry!" Petunia called, voice tight and high with frustration, "Get out of there, _now_!"

It wasn't worth it. Harry was done- _done_. Even just this tiny blip in the timestream… He'd seen _The Butterfly Effect_ with Hermione on a lark. If the Powers, and here Harry began to group them or it bitterly, pulled him back even as early as this second, it was too late. His children…

His children were gone.

A sob tore itself up Harry's throat- too high-pitched, too young- and his tiny fist came down, ineffectually, on the floorboards again.

"Don't make me get your Uncle!" Petunia screeched, reaching the end of her patience with her errant unwanted houseguest.

Her voice was an anchor, a pull of strong emotion, and Harry's eyes snapped to the cupboard door, redirecting his anger similarly. Her shadow through the slates was clearly visible and the sight of it filled him with rage. She was not supposed to be here. He had been meant to die, and to be with his family that had gone before, awaiting only the family left before it was truly heaven. But he was here, and his family, his children, those he'd loved before all else: gone. His weight came down heavily, forcefully as his fists slammed once against the door, startling his aunt away from the slates with a skittish, fluttering motion. "Fetch the bastard, then." And his voice was steeped in pain the sound of a lightning strike, but still too high, too high. Petunia had jerked away from the door in surprise at the sound of actual spoken word from the boy, and her heels clicked a fast metronome's ticking in the other direction. It had been so long with Harry staying silent, she had begun to think he couldn't speak. She bit her nail irritably as she moved toward the bedroom where Vernon still slept, if he'd been able all this time, why hadn't he...?

Unaware of Petunia's startling revelations, Harry grit his teeth against the sobs. There was no point going on. He wouldn't. He eyed the nails stacked in the corner from some long-abandoned project of the younger Harry, but his hand, previously reaching out, curled back at the thought of the pain. He'd been in such pain at the end, before, and now… He uncurled his fingers again in horrified wonder, and they moved smoothly, no trace of the arthritic stiffness that had gripped them in his final moments. It was, he paused, forming a fist, shamefully harder to put himself back in the clutches of that kind of pain than he thought.

_Wouldn't I do anything for my children?_ He asked himself, his teeth gritting.

..._Aren't they already gone? _Some Slytherin impulse reminded him caustically, but Harry shook his head. He would die here and now. Maybe… His eyes darted from the nails to the door. Maybe not the nails. But he would not continue whatever farce the Powers wanted of him, not when they had stolen his family. With that idea planted firmly in his mind, he wiped the hot tear tracks that had formed unnoticed on his cheeks and pushed open his door, crawling out of the cupboard with grim resolve. He needed something that would finish the job for him and he stalked out of the house, ignoring Petunia's shouted explanation to Vernon of why she needed him to get up and check on the freak. Shoved past his own fear, he waited, brimming with a storm that didn't touch his calmly determined expression, at the side of the road. This was rather selfish, he knew, as he shifted forward and back on the balls of his feet, hands behind his back, on the very edge of the curb. But, as far as he was concerned, with the emotions of a century broiling in the brain of a child, this entire universe was complicit in the loss… No, the _annihilation_ of his children. A car turned the corner and sped down the usually quiet, lonely side street. Past the windscreen, an obviously occupied man spoke intently into a clunky mobile car phone, and he appeared to be alone. No wife in the passenger seat to scream, no children in the back to traumatize. _Good_, Harry nodded in hot, furious satisfaction that pulsed through his veins with such force that he stepped forward, _Even the man won't witness it._

However, perhaps catching the movement or maybe simply returning his eyes to the road, the businessman with the clunky phone looked up and swore, foot smashing the brake to the car floor with eyes locked on the messy-haired boy in his pyjamas with closed eyes and open arms ahead of him. A second too late, he remembered to turn the steering wheel away, that the brakes wouldn't save the scrawny creature that had stepped into his path, but all his recall resulted in was the headlight, in place of the grill, smashing into the boy's middle with a sick thunk and crack that wound into the man's stopped heart. Even when the car stopped and his most vital organ roared back to life with a frantic, pulsing beat, the sound of that collision was trapped in its chambers, and echoed with every pulse.

Harry barely heard the car door slam, nor felt the man's hands on his shoulders but for the added pain. He, did, however, hear the man's sobbing apology, his cry for some mystery figure to call 999, and his failing heart had time for one last pang of guilt. When Harry drew in breath, the man held his, wanting to hear and remember whatever accusations the boy threw his way as penance. The words that sailed out on what seemed a last breath were not what he expected yet all Harry could think of to ease the pain of the one who had accidentally helped him try and route the Powers.

"Thank you," whistled the boy, and the man paused, shouted again for an ambulance, and received a response from some neighbour or another, before he bent in.

"Don't thank me," he croaked, tears still falling hard and heavy, "Because I will not let you die."

Harry didn't hear. Everything had gone black.

_Damn it; not this again._

"I told you, Mr. Potter. We're not taking you yet."

_So you're just erasing my entire life, instead? Taking my children out of existence because you aren't bloody ready!_

"_Mr._ Potter," the voice was affronted, now, eh? Fat lot of right it had to take offence, now, "We simply put you in a nearby track for temporary storage."

_And what am I supposed to learn from that?_

"Your children are safe."

The fury that made up what was left of Harry faltered, …_What?_

"Different world, Mr. Potter. We merged your soul with what was left of a soul in this one. You're a whole new person in a whole new timeline. Ah," A tone chimed, "Time's up. Back you go."

_Wait, listen to me-_

"You won't hear from me again until it is really _your time_, Mr. Potter. So I'd cease this foolish nonsense, if I were you. We'll only restore the body if you continue to break it."

_YOU-_

"Good_bye_, Mr. Potter."

When he opened his eyes again, his lungs were burning and he sat up off the tarred road and gravel poking into his back with a sudden gasp for air. The man he'd seen was hovering over him, and Harry actually registered the man's appearance now that his vision wasn't foggy with rage and pain. Grey-blue eyes met his in astonished panic, set in a face not yet beaten with time, but worn by it. Dark brown hair combed and held back with gel had partially escaped its confines; combined with the ruffled suit and bloodied hands and cuffs, it lent the air of a crazed person to the man.

"Where did- You- You've stopped bleeding," He stammered to the young boy staring up at him with strange, green eyes.

Harry looked down, touched his chest and stomach, and murmured with a bitter grimace, "So I have." His mind raced as fingers traced the unbroken skin; obviously, the Powers had restored his body to a point where it could sustain life. Like he was a frog that smashed itself against the wall until his terrarium moved and fell, they'd repaired his container and shoved him back in. "Bloody fuckers."

Taken aback by the miraculous recovery of his victim and his following language, the older man, at least in appearance, pushed back from his seated position and knelt, both to hail down the ambulance and to subconsciously distance himself from whatever eldritch occurrence had passed on that spot. "Well, I can see the ambulance now, so um… Don't worry?"

"I think I'll be fine without it, actually," Harry corrected with a slight downturn of dismay tugging at his words. Fingers and toes wiggled, neck turned, spine bent, knees moved. Everything appeared in full working order. Rolling back a bit, Harry hopped to his feet, ignoring the man's sudden, feeble protest, and shifted from foot to foot to check his balance. _My children are alive._ The thought gurgled up in him like golden champagne bubbles and he couldn't help a manic giggle, the adrenaline from his sudden death apparently not eliminated from his body at the reset the Powers had put it through. _This is temporary, and I _will _see them again._ They'd said it was just storage, after all, and he'd be moving on when they were ready for him. Harry was ready _right now_, of course. Who knew how much time had passed in his home 'track' or whatever the voice had called it. He wanted to see his wife and friends again, to hear Sirius's bark-like laugh and see his mother's face for the first time in his own, true memory. He wanted to be waiting for his children when they came.

Briefly, Harry pondered stepping in front of the police car when it came, but decided not enough time would have passed for whatever the Powers were waiting on. With a shrug, he resigned himself to checking sporadically as he went about this life. That 'checking' essentially meant repeated suicide attempts did not bring Harry down from the adrenaline high that flooded his tiny, too-young body. And in the meantime- Harry jumped once, just to see if he could, and stifled another manic giggle- he might as well enjoy the freedom of movement this youthful body had. Catching the elder man's horrified, wide eyes, Harry paused in his semi-celebration and gave him an apologetic tone, "Must've only nipped me in the side. Sorry for being so dramatic."

"Nipped you?" The man repeated, obviously in shock.

"Yeah, you only just sideswiped me, but I hit my head summat fierce, and that's where all the blood and the passing out came from," Harry continued with innocent emphasis, trying to drive the new state of events into the man's mind before he could come to his senses. He ran a hand through his hair, in case he needed to leave some blood there, but it was already thick with the stuff and he pushed his hand into his pocket. It would be more boring than just reliving his life if he was trapped in a hospital being poked and prodded while they tried to figure out his inexplicable recovery. Better to try and rewrite the events now. Granted, his front was still bloody with a torn jumper and he needed an explanation for that. Wincing at the idea that formed, he hesitated and threw himself down across the road, hard enough to scrape his belly, and the businessman let out an alarmed cry.

"What are you doing to yourself?" He gripped Harry's arm and dragged the boy up to his feet with the strength of panic, "Why would you-"

Harry shot him a hard stare from his days working as a consultant with the Aurors and was abstractly pleased that it retained its power to shut a man up even in his reduced state, "Look. You're going to say it happened like I said, alright? I stepped out and you swerved and only got me in the side."

"I heard you hit," He hissed, holding his palms away from him as if the skin on them was aflame, "I've got your blood on my hands!"

"Look it's that, or I say that afterwards, you felt up some highly inappropriate places while you were checking me over," Harry warned, finally feeling the adrenaline begin to fade and falling into the stick-or-carrot persuasion he typically used with suspects. It didn't make him feel like a splendid example of the morality of mankind, but it might keep him out of hospital and the man out of jail. The man was obviously uneasy, shifting from one foot to the other like he wanted to run, and Harry knew he had him. The hard glint of a dagger shone from smiling eyes, "Deal?"

After looking one way, then another, and finally directing his gaze upwards for guidance or

protection, the man's eyes fell heavy with guilt to his shoes, "Fine. Deal, you- whatever you are."

A sharp grin at his discomfort, "Is this the start of a beautiful friendship?"

"No. Just… No."

"I'll definitely look both ways before crossing the street, again, Officers!" Harry smiled, waving them off before he headed back into his aunt's house. He'd thrown them with his 'normal' behaviour.

Petunia's metronome was slower now, calmer, as she walked across the kitchen floor, making breakfast. The creak of the door and its subsequent, soft _thft_ as it shut perked her overused ears, typically functioning as gossip-detectors, and she turned, a scathing sentence on her lips about Harry's behaviour that morning as she did. He was acting so differently from the usual and she wondered briefly if something had happened to him, but dismissed the thought. Those nasty words, however, shrivelled on her tongue at the sight that greeted her, and her mouth opened to let them drop unspoken to the floor, for their taste had turned sour.

"Hey, Aunt Petunia!" Blood dripped from two of Harry's fingers, and positively coated one half of his face as if his skull had opened and all the blood in his body, ignoring reality's biological cues, had flowed down the side of his head. "I never knew head wounds bled so much," _Lie, _Harry berated himself cheerfully, continuing, "Did you?"

"You're… Not dying…" The words were choked, too hugely against her usual point of view to make it up her thin throat unstrained, "Are you?"

Her painful attempt at concern was waved off, "I'm fine." Harry gave a bloody grin.

Petunia held up one shaking finger, "Shower," then another, "Mop."

"On it, Aunt Petunia."

He could hear the Dursleys arguing through the hissing of the showerhead, and the showerhead seemed a little less angry. Would the old headmaster come and rectify the situation if Harry was thrown out? Or if he simply left? Mrs. Figg still lived on the corner of the block, so he assumed Hogwarts was keeping an eye on his activities- she'd been drawn out onto her front lawn by the sirens. Hopefully, that little car incident would be chalked up to accidental magic saving his life.

It was looking to be very boring on Privet Drive. Harry glanced at the water pooling in the shower bottom, but decided the Powers would take a bit longer to let him move on. A shout from Vernon was shushed by Petunia and gradually the heated discussion subsided into uneasy silence. Turning the water off, Harry stepped out of the shower and into the starts of a dastardly plan. He'd never really gotten much closure with the Dursleys. All right, they'd changed in the end, he supposed, and he'd never seen them since that last fateful farewell, but… They had neglected him his entire childhood and here, here were his past self's tormenters sitting all in one house, still deep in the midst of a foggy hatred towards his own person, and here he was, ready to die and trapped by some unknown Powers in their residence. Why not be a little less bored?

Having exited the bathroom with a large towel wrapped around him, he felt as tiny and mischievous as ever. This body had little control of its magic but- and here Harry pushed inward, felt an answering push in return, and grinned- it was still there. If he wanted to channel it, he had to use something familiar to the body and magic he currently had possession of.

Maybe… Shuffling, still in his towel, to the spare room's closed window, Harry reached out for the latch. "I once had a little bird, and its name was Enza. I opened up the window," The latch thrown, Harry slid the pane open with all the seriousness he could muster, "And in-flew-Enza." For a second he held his breath, waiting for a sign, some spark to show his off-the-cuff idea had some effect. Disappointment had already coiled in his chest, and his Common Sense had been about to take him down a peg or two, when birdsong issued from the open window. A smoky, ethereal thrush flew in, and dissipated in wisps of cool blue smoke that spread through the walls and out the door of the little room, supposedly filling the whole house. The coil eased and Harry grinned, turning to retreat to his cupboard so as to change and mop as Petunia had requested; the Dursleys would not be having an easy week.

Actually, the Dursleys did not have an easy year. Harry found nursery rhymes to be rather effective in channeling the comparatively tiny magical reserves he had in this body. One of his favourite moments with the Dursleys this year had been baking a pie while singing, "Sing a song of sixpence, a pocket full of rye, four-and-twenty blackbirds baked in a pie…" and being thenceforth banned from ever participating in any food-related task ever again. The sour-lemon look on Petunia's face when twenty-four, _singing _blackbirds had sprung from the first cut in what had been meant to be a normal meat pie… Harry didn't think he'd tried so hard not to laugh in his life. But lately…

Harry sighed and squashed one of his many spider companions, not bothering even to sit up from where he was lying belly-down on the floor; lately, the Dursleys had grown boring. Instead of flying into a rage, or growing pale with fear, their new approach to any of Harry's mischiefs had been to ignore. Aunt Petunia had been carrying around some self-help book recently about dealing with trouble children and Vernon simply had a flash of puce in his cheeks before he went about his business. Even Dudley had abandoned him. No longer would he chase after Harry with purple ears, his fat flapping wildly and only increasing his ire- no. Now, Dudley seemed to have gained some sort of unholy patience from Harry's continuous attacks. He would raise one calm, untroubled eyebrow when his food burst into rainbow colors and carry on stuffing his fat gob.

Harry perked up; maybe he'd reformed them. He'd forced the Dursleys to grow self-restraint _years _ahead of schedule! Eh, but… Why bother? Now he had no one to torment. Nothing to do. Except… Harry wracked the ten-year old brain that his over-a-century-old self was trapped in for the date and came up with July thirtieth. Pushing up excitedly with his scrawny arms, he miscalculated and clocked himself one against the ceiling.

"Ow."

Holding the newest bleeding wound, Harry grinned manically to himself. He'd be going to Hogwarts, soon! A whole new ground to play on and whole new ways to stay dead meant he might not be so dreadfully, nail-pullingly bored.

Drowning, he'd discovered, didn't work simply due to his own magic- _his own magic- _betraying him by making him extra buoyant once he lost conscious control of it. Fire had been an interesting experience, and the firemen had been baffled to find him naked in the ashes of the grocery an hour or so after a perimeter had been set up to keep reporters and bystanders away from the wreck. Not something he'd do again. He'd 'died' twice under the same train since he'd been pushed back into the realm of the living while the train was still passing overhead. All in all, he'd mostly just discovered that he still didn't like pain, and the powers-that-be were still not ready for him.

They also seemed unconcerned as to the damage he could do mucking about in this world.

Harry had been visited repeatedly by the man who'd run him down, one Garrett Davidson, who was, Harry had learned, a middle class businessman of no real standing without family, friend, or casual acquaintance, and an odd obsession with rock-breaking that he classified as only a hobby. The poor man was traumatised, and felt some masochistic obligation to "check up" on Harry once or twice a week, apologizing profusely until Harry had enough of it and threatened or distracted him into changing the subject.

"You are not," Garrett had said once, after a particularly graphic description of a dark wizard hunting Harry had gone through, disguised as 'some dream he'd had,' "A real child."

In response, Harry, who'd been hoping Garrett would show some interestingly disgusted or horrified expression from his tale, let his feet lie still for a moment at the seeming non sequitur. Since the 'elder' man had been following the capricious child's lead in their walk, he stopped as well, and Harry turned curiously to face him, "Why do you say that?" Taken aback, and obviously tongue-tied, the slate-eyed man had stammered without really offering an explanation until Harry grew bored and changed the topic.

Perhaps he could be used as a surrogate "guardian" in this upcoming trip.

It all hinged on whether or not Hagrid had ever seen Vernon before, really.

Come to think of it, he hadn't gotten a single letter, yet, and here it was, day before his eleventh birthday. Harry seemed to remember being practically bombarded with the things, and yet, not a peep. Would Hagrid even be the one to show up? Would anyone show up?

Harry, who had been absently scratching about his latest wound, pulled his hand from his hair to stroke a bloody goatee on his chin in thought. He hadn't contemplated that he simply may not be invited to Hogwarts in this world. Since he had the same name, same family situation, and the same magic- so far as he remembered- from his own timeline around age eleven, Harry had assumed that the school would have his name already. Although, his scar was missing. Perhaps he wasn't famous enough to hound like in his previous existence. He could, potentially, sign himself up. He'd put his children's names in as soon as they showed signs of accidental magic- none of that "from birth" shite he'd seen some parents do. Whenever a Squib showed up, the disappointment had been twice as crushing for the poor child. Luckily, only James had been born even near squib levels, and he'd more than made up for his weak spellwork with his Potions and flying skills. He'd been a racer, professional and sponsored by his cousin Victoire's broommaking company in his later years.

Shaking his head, Harry brought his mind back to the immediate problem: he'd rather prefer messing about at Hogwarts to the Dursleys' or another wizarding school. He could give them until tomorrow before he hijacked Vernon's car and paid a visit to Diagon Alley so as to procure the services of a post owl. Or perhaps he would try some doggerel and befuddle a local bird into obedience. It could only land him in the Juvenile Misuse of Magic Office if it failed. Granted, Harry was fairly certain that so long as he did magic somewhere other than his own house, without his wand, he'd be relatively safe. There were only two Traces, after all, one on the wand, and one on the place of residence, and only after one's eleventh birthday. Harry spent much less time in his 'place of residence' than he supposed the Dursleys or the Ministry suspected. Speaking of...

"Bat, bat, come under my hat," he cooed, not bothering with the inanity of the rest of the rhyme, as the first line was sufficient for his devices. He found using nursery rhymes tended to create some physical manifestation of the spell related to the words used, so he was not surprised when an ethereal bat swooped in and nested in his hair. It wasn't fancy, nor a streamlined use of magic, but what mattered was that it got the job done. Now Harry could hear nearly every movement in and a bit around the house while he was holding onto this spell. His cousin was snoring deeply, and his uncle and aunt had doubled, slow breathing almost in sync with one another, like an echo emanating from their room. Easing the latch open with some good old-fashioned leverage (he'd known those nails would have a better use), Harry scrambled through the thin opening he allowed himself, knowing the door would creak if he pushed it further. For once, his nighttime excursions would have a purpose other than destroying the Dursleys' peace of mind or wandering about the neighborhood unaccompanied. So, although he wouldn't bother coming back the next morning, he didn't quite want to get caught on the way out. If he did, he _would _use magical force to get past them, and he didn't have a great grasp on 'not causing pain' with that sort of thing so far.

He wasn't so frustrated, yet, that he'd abandoned _all _morals.

Either way, Harry was out of there like a bat outta hell. "A bat," he giggled under his breath, petting the semi-tangible apparition clinging to his hair, even as he left the front door ajar behind him. It was Privet Drive, for gods' sakes. Highly unlikely to be visited by mass murder, hardened felon, or ne'er-do-well. Still, wouldn't that be a sight if the Dursleys came downstairs to a dirty, bloodied con sitting in their kitchen, eating breakfast on their spotless counter? The bum in his head raised a hand in greeting to the imaginary Dursleys, "_Top o'the morning, guv'nor."_

It was highly inappropriate to giggle into his hands as he snuck off to his dastardly deeds, but Harry supposed if he'd been the kind of old man who shocked dignified people with a giggle or three, he could afford to be a little boy who giggled now and again. The more giggling, the less boredom, the better for the people of this world.

Unfortunately, he did get bored that night. See, he'd used a bit of doggerel verse to mock up a point-me spell and made his way through the streets of Surrey until he found what he assumed was the home of dear Garrett Davidson. It was strangely comfortable being around the man. For Harry, anyway. He reminded him quite a bit of his son, James. They both had that awkward social life thing going on and that dark hair. It was after jimmying the lock open on Garrett's back door through trial and error and snooping around the man's parlor and rock collections that he began to grow bored- impatient of waiting for the morning and tapping his fingers agitatedly against his knee. Which led to Garrett's little surprise in the morning. The poor man, entirely unaware of what was going on downstairs, had actually woken up in a rather good mood, stretching contentedly before he rolled out of bed in his nightclothes and stumbled downstairs, humming to himself. It was a beautiful summer morning, after all. The birds were singing, the sun was shining, there was a lovely smell wafting up from the kitchen...

Wait.

Garrett ran into the kitchen, stopping dead in the doorway at the sight before him. Humming the song he'd had in his head just a moment ago was the little possessed child he'd made a tentative connection with out of guilt. Now the messy-haired boy was wandering about his kitchen, beans on the stovetop and the remains of some animal on a cutting board as well as some toast on a plate. Harry turned with a few specks of blood still on his cheek, and smiled, holding up another white platter, "Sausage, Garrett?"

While Garrett was still in shock, Harry shooed the man to the small, two-person table he had in his cramped kitchen and put a plate stacked with beans, sausage and toast in front of him as well as a fork and knife, then busied himself cleaning up the blood, bones, and fur still mangled on the cutting board.

Garrett looked down at the contents of his plate and over at the cutting board alternately. Was whatever Harry had evidently gutted the main ingredient for the sausages on his plate now? He didn't remember having any meat in the coldbox, nor making any plans with the local grocer to bring some by. Actually, there was something even more important he was overlooking. "Harry," his tone was calm, his tone was _calm, dammit, _"What are you doing here?"

Harry positively beamed, putting the newly-clean cutting board out to dry and bringing his own plate to the table to sit across from the confused businessman, "Well. Today is a very special day." His eyes sparkled as he leaned slightly forward, "Can you guess why?"

"You've graduated primary school," Garrett deadpanned, not touching the food in front of him even as Harry picked up his own fork and began to dig in enthusiastically.

After a bite of sausage, Harry closed his eyes momentarily. He sighed and surveyed his fork fondly, "Food tastes so much better when you catch it yourself."

"What is it, anyway?" Garrett asked. He really would like to know how deeply he'd have to clean his plates afterward. He hoped it wasn't his neighbor's cat, because no matter how sincerely he hated the yowling bastard, his neighbor was a perky brunette with the biggest blue eyes he'd ever seen. Although, size-wise, Harry was currently beating her with the wideness of his eyes at Garrett's question.

He put his fork down and reached across the table, taking Garrett's hand in his undersized fingers. "They're called sausages," he told the taller man in a whisper. He couldn't hold a straight face at the other man's disgruntlement, though, and laughed, "Sorry. Sorry, it's just rabbit."

"You... Caught a rabbit last night."

"I cooked it really well. It's safe." The 'Look of Innocence' aimed in Garrett's direction had felled better men and had been perfected over a century of practice; incidentally it worked just as well, if differently, on the face of a young child as an old man. Harry added in a slightly trembling lower lip. "You... Won't try my cooking? I worked so... Hard..." When Garrett's face went dark with defeat and he took a tense bite, Harry broke out in a grin and stood up on his chair to pat the elder man's head, "That's my boy." Sitting back down, he took a calm bite of eggs before continuing, "You're wrong, you know. It's not time to graduate from primary. It's my birthday." Garrett dropped his stony face and looked up, Harry stabbing a sausage before elaborating, "I didn't want to spend it with the Dursleys this year. I can't spend it with my family because they're all gone." _Some of their doppelgangers here don't even know I exist yet. _"So I decided to come spend it with you. You see... Somewhere along the way, I think I saw something of a kindred soul in you." Despite Garrett's absorption in the tale, he couldn't help a mental shiver at the idea of being kindred with such a deranged boy, even if he had seen some hints of kindness in the child. He didn't quite see how they were similar and waited for some sort of explanation. "Because we're both so alone," Ah, "and because you remind me of family." Here, Harry lost the gravity he'd exuded during his little speech and grinned, patting Garrett's cheek, "You're like a son to me."

"_Like a son to me," _the sentence echoed in Garrett's mind as he put his head in his hands and closed his eyes. He couldn't even be inspiring to a primary schooler. ...Wait, how old was Harry? "It's your birthday?" He asked, coming out of his haze of self-pity as Harry contentedly munched on his toast.

"This body has been on this planet eleven years today," Harry confirmed, not bothering to swallow the bite of toast he'd only half-chewed as he responded and still with that bit of rabbit blood on his cheek.

"Honestly," Garrett sighed, and grabbed a napkin, wiping off the blood with a quick motion that froze Harry in his tracks, "And swallow before you speak. We don't want to see your food."

Hermione had done the same thing to Ron and him once. Twice. Often. And after she passed away, James had taken up her duty, running after his surprisingly spry elder patriarchs and pounding table manners into their wizened skulls only to sigh in despair as it leaked out the other side. Garrett was looking at him uncomfortably now, and Harry was surprised to note there were tears gathering in his own eyes. Quickly, Harry blinked them away before they could fall, "Could I borrow some rope?"

Garrett had been surprisingly compliant, obviously unable to deal with crying children well and unable to comprehend what Harry could possibly want with rope. He'd followed Harry like a concerned puppy as Harry made his way to the nearest park, despite Harry smiling and telling him to go home. An exasperated huff; Harry didn't exactly want Garrett to have to witness this, whether it worked or not. He wasn't worried about Garrett telling anyone if it didn't; he still had plenty of blackmail opportunity from all the times Garrett had walked alone with him. He didn't like ruining people's lives, but he knew just the threat of it would keep Garrett quiet. No, the problem was that if it worked, Garrett would look slightly like a murder suspect.

"Rabbit trap," Harry explained when Garrett gave his knots a funny look. Either Garrett was overly trusting or he didn't recognize a noose when he saw one, since Harry easily climbed the tree with noose in hand and it was only when he fixed the loop around his own neck that Garrett got it.

"No," Garrett's eyes widened, his hands coming out of his pockets in a placating gesture, "You don't have to do this." He hadn't imagined there was anyone who could just set up their own suicide in front of a near-stranger. _Which was obviously what Harry was counting on when he fed me that rabbit trap bollocks, _Garrett berated himself.

"Just get out of the park for a while," Harry replied, sitting cross-legged on the joining of two medium-sized branches somewhat high up the tree and tightening the noose a bit more, "If it doesn't work, I'll find you and explain." He flashed a pocket knife, "I've got this if I need to cut myself down." All perfectly logical preparation, because it would suck to just sit there and die over and over again until the Powers took him. If it didn't work the first time, Harry tended to cut himself free. He stood and stepped a bit forward, "I'm warning you to get out now if you don't want to look like you set up a fake suicide."

"Why are you doing this?" Garrett asked, pleading now and trying to move surreptitiously toward where Harry had tied the other end of the noose near the ground.

Harry gave him a soft smile, "I miss them." The next second he stepped off the branch and Garrett ran for the other end of the rope, but not quite in time. Harry's neck snapped with a loud crack and the rope jumped before Garrett could untie the other end. Instead of saving Harry, he just released his corpse into gravity's pull, the body hitting the ground with a quieter thump than the crack from earlier.

He ran over to the boy, hoping the noise had been a figment of his imagination, and breathed, "Oh, god, Harry," when he saw how the neck was already bruising and at such an odd angle. Gingerly, he put his fingers at the pulse point just a bit under Harry's jaw in the vain hope that there might yet be a flutter of life.

Nothing.

Garrett felt his eyes begin to burn, and he blinked rather desperately. Suddenly, another crack and Harry's head realigned just before the body sat up with a violent gasp, knocking Garrett in the forehead and onto his back. He scrambled back up to his feet and stared, mouth agape as Harry shook his head like a dog shaking off rainwater.

Looking down at his still-tiny limbs, Harry whined pathetically and lay back down, "Dammit." The boy just lay there for such a long minute that Garrett creeped warily back to his side, and when his shaggy-haired bedhead eased back into Harry's vision, the boy wiggled his fingers. "Boo." Jumping back, and stumbling twice before he could regain his feet, Garrett put one hand on his heart.

"What _are _you?"

A pause, "Just Harry."


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: As the Fair Use Act demands I am not making or stealing any profits with this, since I do not own and I do not sell Harry Potter.**

**Edit(10/24/2014): Thank you to absolutely no one for noticing the grammar notes left in this chapter lol. Corrected and removed.**

"_What _are _you?"_

_A pause, "Just Harry." _With a grunt borne more of frustration than effort, Harry brought himself back up to his feet and stretched his arms over his head, spine popping loudly in the quiet, lonesome park. Now he should probably keep his promise and explain to Garrett exactly what was going on, but there was something about how he'd woken up that was niggling at him. What was it...? Oh. "I didn't have to cut myself down," Harry mused to himself, eyes narrowing in Garrett's direction, "I wonder if that might have been due to the efforts of a misguided do-gooder trying to keep me from my family." He stared a moment more at the suddenly-petrified businessman, before waving a dismissive hand, "Couldn't have been."

Garrett got down on a shaky knee, trying to see Harry eye-to-eye, "Harry, how are you alive right now?"

Harry eyed him for a moment. If it wasn't abundantly clear magic was at work, Harry would eat his own pinky. Common Sense sighed and flexed Harry's diaphragm, forcing out a hiccup and a resolve to put his tale to words, "It's sort of like a curse. You were right when you said I was not a real child," He fixed Garrett with a heavy look, "I've lived out my life once already, but when I got to the end of it, they sent me back."

"That's mad-"

"You just saw it happening again, Garrett." The taller man hesitated, and Harry continued, "I lived a long, long time and I died, but whatever is on the other side was, and I quote, 'not ready for me,'" he scowled before starting his next sentence (though Garrett privately sympathized with the other side), "So they put me in a parallel world's me, a little over a century off from my actual timeline, and refuse to let me die until they're 'ready.'"

A long blankness of expression, and Garrett dropped his weight, sitting heavily on the ground, a few facts clicking together, "You're over a century old."

"Yup," Harry popped the p, walking over to where Garrett sat and putting a calming hand on his head. He leaned down slightly to put them on eye level with one another, "And you do remind me of my family." He smiled, "One of my sons, specifically. But it looks like I won't be seeing them for a while." Garrett couldn't help but put his fists over his eyes, blocking out the world, when the eldritch creature began to _run tiny fingers through his hair, of all the_\- It wasn't that he couldn't reconcile the appearance of youth and the high voice of a boy with the reality of Harry's age, but rather that he _could_. It all made sense if he believed Harry's barking story, and... It wasn't so barking, after seeing Harry die twice, and return unharmed from the gateway. "It's alright," that too-high voice soothed, "I know this is a lot to take in." Garrett's mind was mired in muck and misery, and Harry was saying it was _a lot to take in._ God, just the adrenaline and fear of seeing Harry up there with that noose around his neck had been _a lot to take in. _Shamefully, he felt like running home and curling up in bed to cry. "I've got a favor to ask, though." An incredulous turn of suddenly-open eyes to Harry's apologetic smile, "Could you drive me into London, tomorrow?"

After a lot of shouting and crying and confusion- mostly on Garrett's part, Harry had one of his amazing streaks of luck and Garrett's boss called, telling him to meet someone in just the same corner of London as Harry had business in the next day. When Garrett hung up the phone, he looked down at a grinning Harry with one twitching brow and pursed lips, "Just because I'll be going in that direction doesn't mean-" Harry's grin widened and Garrett let the end of his original sentence fall in the rubbish bin where it belonged. "Yeah, I'll take you."

To be honest, Harry hadn't been in an actual automobile for a very long time. He was just a little bit excited. Just a bit. He'd almost clambered into the passenger seat, but Garrett had caught him around the middle and deposited him in the back, explaining, "Just because you're an adult on the inside doesn't make the front seat suddenly safe for your tiny body."

"But I've got a deathwish!" Harry protested as Garrett buckled him in.

"Then stick your head out the window or something," the elder man had retorted, moving up to the driver's seat, "I don't want to get thrown in jail for reckless endangerment." Glancing back at the 'boy' in his backseat once more, Garrett added under his breath, "And possibly kidnapping, if I have you as figured as I think."

It was fun enough in the backseat. The ride was smoother than a broom and just about the speed he used to cruise at, when travelling casually from place to place. No bugs splattered in his eyes, but he couldn't feel the wind, and despite Garrett's suggestion, the businessman actually did _not_ allow Harry to stick his head out the window, child locking the thing in place and returning Harry's stuck out tongue with one of his own in the rear view mirror. Harry maintained it would have been _more_ fun in the front seat.

"There's nothing here, Harry," Garrett commented, craning his neck as he reached the end of Harry's directions, "Just an empty lot."

"It's called the Leaky Cauldron; look just between those two shops, there," Harry informed him, grinning as the pub popped into existence for the other man, who rubbed one eye and pulled over to avoid hitting anyone in his distraction. He was a bit more wary about driving now. _Thanks for _that_, Harry, _he thought with an internal sigh. "Well, this is my stop," Harry unhooked his seat belt and leaned forward, "I shouldn't need a ride back, but I'll probably be seeing you again. If an owl or some bird-type animal starts following you around check and see if it's carrying a letter from me." He pressed a kiss to Garrett's cheek, winking when Garrett flinched away, "What, do I embarrass you already?"A fond smile, then, "You really do remind me of him..." Common Sense thought it prudent to remind Harry that _Garrett was not James_, but Harry ignored the kind efforts of his under-appreciated better half. He knew that. He wasn't as barmy as George had ended up.

Garrett cleared his throat and looked away, "If you weren't so young-looking, you'd actually remind me of my own da." Harry appeared a bit too pleased so the other man added hastily, "Because he was a right sick bastard when it came to his sense of humor."

"Ah, Garrett," Harry ruffled the dark hair of his companion and hopped out of the car, keeping his head in just long enough to laugh, "You make an old man's heart light again."

"Get outta here," Garrett shooed, blushing from ear to ear with sheer indignation.

"You got it," Harry saluted and was gone, leaving Garrett with an uneasy feeling filling the space that once held Harry as he drove off to meet the owners of a local franchise.

Shaking his head, Harry hopped up the steps and entered the Leaky Cauldron, strolling up to the bar and climbing up onto one of the stools there.

"Well, hello there," the barkeep, Tom, greeted in amusement as Harry's messy head of hair popped up over the edge of the counter with a serious expression. He'd already planned this trip out, but he was beginning to reconsider some of the finer details. Maybe he would make a few detours or even cross a few places off his list. His mind already in the Alley, he didn't bother schooling his expression into something more childlike. "And how might I help you today, good sir?" The tone of amused condescension was something one got used to as a child and an elder, so Harry paid it no mind.

"D'you mind exchanging these for knuts and sickles?" Harry pushed the money he'd "commandeered" from the Dursley family over the year he'd been there onto the counter.

Tom nodded and scooped it up, handing Harry a nice pile of mostly silver coins. The barkeep was used to it, with muggleborns, and having the odd magic-sensitive muggle wander in occasionally made having some muggle money in-house a good safety precaution. He fiddled with a dragon pin on his apron absent-mindedly, setting it right-side up and smoothing the wrinkles around it, "Anything else?"

"Got a moment to open up the Alley?" Harry asked, still thinking of whether or not to stop by a Quidditch supply store. There were a multitude of ways he could try to kill himself with a broom, but was it worth the expense? Distractedly, some part of his mind noted that suicide was starting to be less of a duty and more of a hobby, but the majority of Harry's thought process had moved on. (Well, Common Sense lingered pointedly, but it was becoming less and less of a major player).

"Sure," Tom winked the eye that was slightly bigger than the other, and Harry wondered if that had actually been a cosmetic choice with the way he highlighted it, "Going to go hang around Ollivander's?"

Harry nodded, _Sure. _"Can't wait to get a wand of my own!" He grinned, and Tom returned it, getting out his own wand and starting to move around the counter towards the little archway in the back of the semi-decrepit pub. Harry really was going to get his wand back. Or for the first time. Whatever. So it hadn't even technically been a lie. Using nursery rhymes was fun, but it got frustrating trying to remember or figure out new rhymes for specific purposes. Harry wanted a wand again, dammit. The control it gave over his magic was not reproducible without extensive wandless practice that he _did not want to do. _Although, his luck being what it was, maybe...

Behind Tom's back, he hopefully moved his hand through the swish and flick of the first charm he'd ever learned and watched as the glass they passed on the counter sat even more sturdily than before. Mocking him with its amazing gravitational connection, it even kept its seat as someone who had obviously started on happy hour a few hours early smashed their head down against the counter with a table-rattling thump.

Stupid glass.

Harry imagined the light that flashed off it as Tom and he walked out of the pub was a mocking wink and he blew it a silent raspberry before they were in the little alley and the glass was out of view. His Common Sense was pointedly quiet.

"Are you meeting your parents in there or," Tom glanced down at Harry as he tapped the sequence Harry had memorized decades past on the crumbling brick, "Are you a muggleborn?"

Trying to decide which would more quickly rid him of Tom's presence, Harry smiled to buy time. If he said he was meeting his parents, Tom would either let him go or try to escort him to the imaginary pair. He could probably escape, but he didn't want to deal with causing a hubbub in the Alley just because Tom thought there was a young child separated from his parents. If he said he was a muggleborn, Tom might want to guide him around. But... He did have a business to run. He'd likely point out what Aurors looked like and what they did, and then retreat.

"Muggleborn," Harry decided, and then affected a slightly uncertain expression, "I mean, that is what they call it when your parents are non-magical, right?"

Tom patted his head, "Yeah. You'll be fine, then."

_What?_ The blank expression that crossed his face went unnoticed by Tom as the passageway opened, bricks curling away from the center as if withdrawing from a flame. As far as he remembered, it was relatively dangerous for muggleborns in the Alley alone at this point in history. The Malfoys and all were still stalking Diagon with nothing but purist thought on the brain, right?

The Alley didn't look too different from the last time he'd seen it towards the _end _of his life, barring the absence of the Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes storefront and Victoire's chain of broom shops, all named _A Lucky Streak. _When he'd died, Lucky Streak brooms were battling for top of the market with two other companies. Victoire had always had a knack for enchantment. Harry shook the mist of memory from his head and took a closer look at the Alley he'd known almost his entire life. Same cobbled road and old-fashioned architecture, same bustling groups of laughing families and friends, same shadowy path off the side leading to Knockturn, same shady figures flitting about the edges of that Alley, same stuck up purebloods moseying down the Alley- Wait, what the hell was _that?_ Harry came to a dead stop in front of a tall metal pole with a circular sign at the top of it. The sign was a bright blue, deep in hue and more than a good three Harry's above his head. It towered above even the shops and Harry could see more of them up and down the street, now that he'd noticed this one. Curiously, he glanced around, and not a single person seemed to care about the signs' presence, so either they had been there a while or only Harry could see them. Watching a woman wearing several different reptile-print afghans carefully, he saw that she did not mysteriously walk through the pole she was headed for but instead moved around it absent-mindedly.

All right, they'd likely been there a while.

It was possible there was some harmful side effect to touching them since not a single person was leaning, swinging, or brushing past one of them, and Harry had learned in his years of experience that it was human nature to touch nearly everything they possibly could. If it was there, and able to be interacted with in some way, someone was likely messing about with it. Maybe it was some sort of pest control that zapped rats and such dead. Well, then.

Harry grabbed the pole with both hands.

For a second, he was entirely disappointed in the lack of shooting pain or pyrotechnics that could have preceded his death, but a moment later, a pain of a different kind swept aside all thought. He wanted to stagger away from the pole, instinctually trying to let go of what he associated with the mind-splitting pain digging deep into his brain, distance himself from the physical representation of his agony. However, it was as if his hands were glued to the metal, since no matter how his neurons screamed at the muscles to let go, no amount of movement would let his hands leave the pole. The searching feeling in his mind shifted slightly, and stabbed at a different part of his brain, and suddenly the pain began to fade as foreign knowledge flooded Harry's consciousness, his eyes darting and unable to think of anything else as the strange presence pumped information into his brain like a choppy hose filling a water balloon.

_The compulsion you felt to touch this pole was not something to be alarmed about; it is here to attract muggleborns such as yourself by the feel of your blood. The Longbottom family has installed these info-meters for your protection! Their proposal garnered great support in the Wizengamot, with the Bones family, the Dumbledores, Weasleys, Malfoys, Perkins branches, Potters, and MacNairs helping to push the bill through. Thanks to their dedicated perseverance, now every muggleborn can have the knowledge of a pureblood upon entry to the wizarding world!_

Harry was actually pretty sure he died once during the transfer, but he couldn't concentrate long enough to confirm or disprove the hypothesis.

_Now, a brief history of the wizarding world and the founding families of Info-Meter._

Shit.

What Harry gathered from the diabolical machine as he stumbled away, frayed neurons firing sporadically, was that the main change so far in this timeline as compared to his was the fact that Voldemort went after the Longbottoms while Bellatrix had been sent after the Potters that Halloween night that started it all. A frown wiggled over his dizzied expression and he sat hard on the front stoop of a nearby shop.

It appeared the Longbottoms and the Potters had both survived. The information was still settling, and with his rudimentary Occlumency skills- alright, his terrifying awful Occlumency skills- he could feel it would take quite some time for the rest to sink in. He'd have to fill in the blanks on his own. Question one, why had he been with the Dursleys? Were the living Potters, perhaps, distant cousins that hadn't existed in his world? _Plausible, _his Common Sense comforted. A small family walked past, the little girl with messy blonde hair giggling as her parents swung her between them, the bright smiles on their faces suggesting they weren't just indulging her. A group of three boys and one man were walking the other direction, the nearly identical crops of auburn hair on each head implying the man was the boys' father, and his face was lined with worry even as he smiled, holding the youngest two's hands more as restraint than out of affection while the elder followed a little behind, arms crossed, clothing hemmed with embroidered fire, and obviously prepared to cross from childish sulking into teenage angst in a year or so. Harry could remember when James had hit that age, never walking next to his parents, and scoffing when Lily and Albus got picked up or kissed, dodging Harry's attempts to do the same for him. "_I'm almost eleven," James had scowled, pushing his father away before he could be trapped in a hug, "I'm not a baby." He and Ginny had shared a look, before Harry swooped down and scooped his sulky preteen up, Ginny leaning over and plastering a big, sloppy kiss on James' forehead. He'd wiped it away immediately, but some of the tension of the day was gone when Harry set him back down._ Harry sighed, his kids hadn't been small enough to lift for a long, long time. His grandchildren had even grown out of it before the end, and were just thinking of their own sprogs when he died. He shook his head, no point worrying about his family in any universe just yet. The Powers would let him go when they let him go.

For the time being... Harry moved down the sidewalk with a hop, skip and a jump, stopping just a foot outside Ollivander's and taking an exaggeratedly huge step to bridge the final distance. Let it never be said that Harry James Potter had lost touch with his inner child. A glance down at his knobby knees and too-thin limbs, and Harry giggled. His outer child, too, now. The door opened without a sound, as per usual, and Harry hastily fell into the game of "Find The Ollivander" that he played each time he'd entered the dusty shop for his children, grandchildren, and the descendants of the rest of the Weasley clan. Again, Ollivander managed to find him before he could find Ollivander.

"Well, hello," A misty voice said behind him and Harry jumped, turning towards the far corner where the picky wands were lying. The man always scared him; it didn't matter how prepared Harry thought he was upon entry nor how old he was at the time. At both eleven and one hundred and seventy two, the wispy-haired, bug-eyed immortal stick of a man could sneak up on him without more than an inkling of a plan. Ollivander still creeped him out as a person, too. However, as Harry's eyes met Ollivander's, it appeared that the feeling was mutual in this world. "Mr. Potter," the silvery-eyed creep breathed, "As I live and breathe."

"Well, I'm sure glad to know you're still doing that, Mr. Ollivander. After all, you probably started alongside dinosaurs and it's been quite a while since then," Harry quipped, even as his brow creased, "But I understand you meant it to be taken as an expression of surprise." This wasn't the usual response to the Boy Who Lived from his own universe; with the way Ollivander's skin had paled and his already huge eyes threatened to engulf his entire face, the old man looked as if he'd seen a ghost. Harry's head cocked slightly to the side, as he played semi-ignorant muggle-raised wizard, "How did you know my name, anyway?"

"I know your parents," Ollivander replied, snapping out of his shock to move in closer, displaying his usual lack of respect for people's personal bubbles and staring deep into Harry's eyes, "Where have you been held all this time? And how have you been cured?"

"Wait, wait, wait," Harry held his hands up both as a gesture of placation and to gain a little more personal space. Ollivander's breath smelled like peppermint and wood varnish, and Harry wasn't sure he wanted to keep thinking about why. His mind raced through the fragments of information he'd been given. The Potters were still alive, he'd been with the Dursleys, he'd been seen as... Kidnapped? And sick or cursed? "What do you mean? I mean, I don't remember much about the first year of my life, but I'm pretty sure I've just been living with my mother's sister for the other ten years. And I think I'm fine... Ish?"

"Your soul was allegedly torn by a horde of dementors the day your family was attacked by Bellatrix Lestrange," Ollivander let his hand hover by Harry's face as if he wanted to grab it and examine it, "And then, you disappeared, along with the muggle half of Mrs. Potter's family. You were all presumed dead."

"Sorry, what? I've been in Surrey this whole time- And..." Harry was more than confused, did someone place some sort of Fidelius Charm over the Dursleys? But hadn't other muggles seen them? It was true that Mrs. Figg never sat and watched 4 Privet Drive like she had in Harry's home universe, nor had she ever come over or even really acknowledged the Dursleys' presence. He hadn't exactly talked with her, or heard her talking to others, and he knew it would be possible in the future to specify a Fidelius Charm for a specific group or person... Could it be some ward that acted similarly? "Like a wizard-repelling charm...?" Harry wondered aloud, ignoring Ollivander's pensive hum. Granted, not a single wizard had found his house while he was growing up in his original timeline, but if Lily- the older Lily- this was about to get confusing- if his _mother _was still alive here, he thought she'd have checked on her sister at least once in ten years. And supposedly, the Dursleys had vanished. A thought occurred to him. "Wait, is half my soul floating around in a dementor's stomach somewhere?"

"Potentially," Ollivander nodded, obviously thinking over something important himself as his eyes tracked over Harry's face again and again. Harry _had _been wondering why his judgement felt vaguely off-kilter from his previous life.

"And why are you even telling me all this if you know that I should be acting like a dementor's victim and I'm not? Maybe I'm an imposter," Harry realized, his Common Sense nodding frantically inside him.

Ollivander tapped his too-small-to-be-useful lenses, "I can tell if polyjuice or any sort of disguising charms are in use."

"That's clever," the younger of the two complimented, already distracted by the new information.

"Thank you," Ollivander's smile was as eerie as the rest of his appearance and creaked across his face like a bone crackling. Harry didn't shudder and, instead, smiled back with an inner conviction similar to that he'd used when Albus was on playdates with Scorpius Malfoy and he was forced to spend hours not killing his Hogwarts nemesis, _making small talk_, of all things. This could never match that, of course, but it came close. Returning to the issue at hand, Ollivander frowned, "With your kidnapping, no one really thought too deeply on the matter of the dementor retaining part of your soul, but as it is," he blinked his too-big eyes, "it may actually be a boon to you, if you are as well-functioning as you seem even while separated from it. There is a dark form of magic that involves splitting the soul, to create a tether of sorts and keep the caster from moving on or becoming a ghost. Since you managed this without any murder or tainting of the soul," Ollivander shrugged, "Well, you'll probably be fine, and live a very long life."

_A very long life. A very long life. A very long- _Shut up, Harry thought irritably at the part of his brain that was repeating the words with a sadistic- or rather, masochistic- glee. He was going to die and die soon, dammit. "If I could find and kill the dementor, could that help?" That's what you did with Horcruxes, after all, and Harry _had _caught the not-so-veiled reference.

"It's hard to find one specific one amongst the hordes and besides, dementors don't die." Ollivander smiled pleasantly, "I've always wanted a friend that wouldn't just pass away after a century or so. Flamel is getting a little annoying in his adolescence."

_Dementors don't die?_ Harry'd known they didn't die of old age, but they didn't die at all? _I can't just kill it?! _Harry found himself blurting the same thing he'd told Garrett before in the guise of a joke, "But I've got a deathwish!"

**That's our show, folks. Tune in next time for more suicidal hijinks and remember that Harry is batshit. Batshit, I tell you. If you feel like suicide just might be for you, then pause, and call the suicide hotline for your area, or talk out the pros and cons of it with your local mind-shrinkers. Or just, yanno, take my word for it that it'll suck if you die. Yep. You can trust me.**


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer: do not own, no money made.**

**(Long A/N warning) So an anonymous reviewer asked me if the reason I didn't want any of y'all to die is because I wouldn't have any reviews. Actually rather funny, but this allows me to say that I'm stressing the "no suicide" thing because I know people who find stories like this funny have a tendency to actually think about suicide every so often, even if it's just for a second. Now, it's not bad to think of it every so often, but I'd prefer you all to live. Why?** **Because I am very fond of humanity.** **There is something I could find to love in everyone.** **Call me Dumbledore, if you must.** **So, yanno. Even if you're sitting there thinking, 'Oh, they just don't want my death on their conscience' remember that I know you are lovable in some way. Because my opinion matters. Obviously. (Long A/N END)**

_Dementors don't die? "But I've got a deathwish!"_

"So did I, a century ago. I was only seven hundred and eighty-something years old at the time," Ollivander placed a hand on his heart, "Ah, to be young again."

"All I wanted to do was see my family again," Harry scowled, entirely ignoring Ollivander's reminiscence, and crossing his arms over his chest, "And they give me immortality, instead." He looked upwards, one accusing finger pointed up as if through the ceiling and sky the Powers sat watching, probably laughing maniacally at his undoing, "This is the exact opposite of what most major religions promised me happens when you die!" No judgement, no freedom from suffering, no punishment or reward, no reuniting with the loved ones that had gone before. No. Instead, he was trapped in a universe of simulacrums that imitated the people he knew, but, according to the Powers' secretary, had different souls. _We merged your soul with what was left,_ that thrice-damned voice had said. Why Harry hadn't given it much thought until now, he didn't know, but it might have had something to do with the damage a dementor attack did both to the soul and the frontal cortex. Sirius had probably suffered the same thing both from prolonged exposure and the dementors nearly sucking his soul out in Harry's third year. It certainly helped explain Harry's judgement issues now and Sirius's then. Hermione had done some studies on dementors' effects so as to hopefully ban them from use, but it had come to naught but some interesting reading and the nodding of Wizengamot heads that yes, dementors were very dangerous, and should probably continue to be contained in Azkaban with their worst criminals.

Yay, decision-making.

Ollivander nodded approvingly at Harry's pose, "I see you're working on your quirk. Every good immortal needs a quirk, but, perhaps it would be best suited for another time. I believe," He blinked those large eyes again, and Harry swore that it took half a minute for his lids to bridge the immense distance and return to their resting positions, though only a moment passed, "you came here for a wand."

"Yeah, I have this weird psychic sense that a wand made of holly with a phoenix feather from, oh, I don't know, some still-living phoenix familiar would suit me best," Harry stated, trying futilely to cut this visit short, but the sudden twinkle in Ollivander's eye told him his efforts were wasted.

"Now, now, Harry. The wand chooses the wizard."

There _were _a few spectacular results Harry was less bored by, such as flipping Ollivander onto his back or when he'd waved some yew wand and the plants on Ollivander's desk withered literally into ash.

"I like this one," he'd smirked, rolling it from hand to hand before Ollivander snatched it back and added it to the growing pile of wand boxes beside him.

"It doesn't like you," the older man assured him, bustling back among the shelves and picking up a few more boxes, which he loaded into his patchwork sleeved arms. The next one, like many others, just exhaled a feeble wisp of smoke that dissipated after only a fraction of a second. And the next, and the next, and the next, and the next...

But the next.

Harry took in a sharp breath when it hit his hand- this was not the feeling he'd gotten from his first wand, and the wand itself was thinner, more delicate-looking, not the sturdy stick he'd had before. Ollivander gave him a knowing glance and what passed for a smirk in his sometimes vague expressions. Alright, maybe the wand did choose the wizard. He supposed such a light and brave wand as he'd had before didn't particularly like all the darkness he'd gone through in the century following its acquisition.

"It's not one of mine; this one's made of azobe," Ollivander snickered, "A most stubborn wood to bend. Give it a flick." The following gentle wave resulted in a loud crack as a rib in Harry's chest broke and punctured his heart, almost perfectly. He was fairly certain he only died for a second, because Ollivander had only begun to move towards him once he sat back up and grinned.

"This is it, isn't it?"

Ollivander nodded, his brow furrowed, "The core is powdered grindylow claw, and, surprisingly, that means it likes you."

Well, duh. "I did say I've got a deathwish, right?"

The wand was on the house. Mainly because Ollivander had extorted a promise to write him weekly in exchange for it and Harry hadn't been able to turn it down. He probably didn't have a trust vault, seeing as his parents didn't know where he was or if he was even still alive. A shudder, then, as Harry wondered how it would feel for James or Lily or Albus to have been attacked and then taken from him at an early age. Granted, people had tried, but, well, Harry hadn't been consulting the Aurors just based on his dumb luck with Voldemort. His favorite curse back then had been one originally intended for use in practical jokes that eliminated the inflexibility of the body and enabled the caster to tie their victim into harmless, but restraining knots. Well, harmless if the curse was canceled once they'd been untied. Harry may have 'forgotten' to check that the Aurors had untied some of the men and women that attacked his children before he canceled the spell on a few occasions.

Or several occasions.

Wait, hold on a moment. His parents were alive in this universe and didn't know where their child was, and hadn't for years. Could he really just go gallivanting around knowing that they would be suffering that sort of bone-deep pain? A twinge of repressed conscience, and Harry shook his head. He didn't want to be controlled by them right now, because no matter how old he really was, he knew they would likely only see his physical age, even if he explained the situation. If he trusted them enough to explain the situation.

Plus, he wasn't sure how well they'd react to his foaming, spitting death in about- Harry glanced at a nearby sundial as he walked past- two hours. He just couldn't pass up that rainbow-colored poison he'd seen in Knockturn without trying it out! It had only left him a sickle and two knuts lighter, after all, and the look on the shopkeeper's face when he downed it had been priceless.

Harry meandered into a nearby Ministry post, where propaganda for joining a government career track or the Aurors plastered the walls with peeling corners and pictures of well-built youth with polished wands. There was a young woman with short, spiky blonde hair behind the desk and she looked up apathetically when he walked in. In the corner of the room, hanging from a hastily added rusty nail was another of those blue signs the Longbottoms had put up. He supposed registering for Hogwarts would eventually alert his parents to his survival, however, he remembered most of the system as being automated, spells keeping track of and assessing need and assigning financial aid or sending letters. The only time an actual person needed to notice what students had and had not been accepted, denied, or invited to Hogwarts was if the letter couldn't reach the intended recipient or the invited student was muggleborn, up until the Sorting ceremony itself.

"C'n I 'elp you?" she asked around a jaw full of chewing gum, blowing a bubble almost as punctuation.

"I need the forms for registration and financial aid for the upcoming Hogwarts school year, please?" Harry smiled charmingly and the witch blew another bubble, unmoved.

"Yeah, I'mma need t'see yer parents," she said, resting her chin on one hand and ignoring how the occupants of the front cover of the magazine her elbow rested on squeezed against the edges of the page, mouths moving in silent protest. Her piercing grey eyes would surely have brought the most recalcitrant kid into line as she geared up for yet another bubble with some impressive pumping of her jaw. "What's yer name, kid?"

"I just need to bring the forms to my parents," Harry tried again, hoping to forestall what appeared to be his inevitable ousting from the outpost. He would have seen this coming if he wasn't trying to funnel a hundred years of experience through the damaged ten-year-old brain he had at his disposal. Probably. Or not. He'd jumped into a lot of things head-first he might've done better peeking over the edge with.

"Mm-hmm," she replied, unimpressed and unrelenting, "We c'n do this th'easy way, or th'ard way. Bu' either way is fine wi'me."

"I'll show myself out, then," Harry gave in, still hoping to escape with his anonymity intact until he reached Hogwarts, where he was sure Dumbledore wouldn't let him leave, trying to protect the poor little first year from his unknown abductors.

He _would_ still be able to get out, of course, no matter what the headmaster thought- it just would keep him from being removed until he was damn well bored of being there. Harry reached for the doorknob, and suddenly felt his hand twitch away as if being repelled.

"Nice try," the teen blew and popped a bubble, pulling the gum back into her mouth, "Y'think I dunnae a run'way when I see one?" Taking out a little doohickey shaped like a flying saucer, she let one pierced brow raise above the other, "We're gon'ta be here fer a while, so ye might's'well tell me yer name."

"Eloise," Harry returned flippantly, his eyes sharp as he examined the little tchotchke on the table. A warding spell linked to an object for ease of use that restricted exit without any visible change in the air or any 'punishment' for attempts at escape. Ah, he knew this one. Flibberty's something-or-other.

...Well, he knew how to get out of it, and that's what counted. He ran an impatient hand through his hair; he couldn't just take it down, though. This body had too little magic for that sort of stunt, but he had another idea he could try.

The teen's eyes widened at Harry's nervous gesture and for once, her chewing stopped. No new bubbles appeared. "Morgana's saggy tits," she breathed. Harry gave her a look for her language and she blushed without really knowing why. He was just a kid, after all. "I just-" She babbled, "Ye- I mean, ye look _just _like Mr. Potter when ye do that. Are- ye- Ye've got to be- Ye- Ye're Harry Potter, ain'tcha? Ye are!" Her eyes narrowed as the revelation faded into a million possibilities. "I'd normally call th'Civils fer sitchations like this, but I think th'Aurors won't mind comin' in fer ye."

"I'm uh, not Harry Potter," Harry denied, too late. _Honestly, I'm starting to wonder if the dementor-induced brain damage made me slow in the head, _he berated himself, unaware of the irony. "Just let me go without calling the Aurors and you'll save yourself the embarrassment. I get mistaken for a Potter a lot, but I'm muggleborn."

His delivery of that poor excuse must have been flawless, because for a moment there was a flicker of doubt, but then the teen refocused, shaking her head.

"I know a Potter when I see'un," She began, a slow realization dawning, "But it's maybe you don't know it." Getting out from behind the deck, she approached him as if he were a wounded animal, "I know ye've prolly ne'er heard about this, but a long time ago, the youngest Potter child was kidnapped, and not a single wizardin' commun'ty could find 'im, so it makes sense if 'e was raised wit' muggles."

"What are you saying?" Harry asked, knowing very well what she was saying, but trying to cover how he was edging for the corner of the building. This sort of entrapment spell was always weakest at corners. He wanted out, even if he couldn't give more than a gut feeling why. There was some sort of line in his mind, and meeting the parents that gave their lives for him in a different universe was crossing it. He'd always thought his reunion with them would be in the afterlife, where they'd remember their one year together and catch up on what had happened in Harry's life and their time as spirits. But this? Meeting the parents that created the body he was inhabiting but with whom he had no actual history? Would it shift which parents he met in the afterlife? Or would he end up in this universe's version? Or did they all end up in the same place anyway? The same powers seemed to be in charge of it, but Harry wasn't too sure that could work as conclusive evidence for a united afterlife. But he couldn't think that reasoning through at the time, he was too focused on covering his movement towards one of the spell's weak points. "I think the Aurors would be able to find this Potter boy even if he was with muggles, right?" Wrong. The Ministry hadn't been able to find Harry in his previous timeline, when Albus the elder (as he'd called the barmy headmaster in the presence of his own Albus) had placed him with the Dursleys.

"Mebbe not," the girl denied, "There are spells ta hide 'most anything. An' sit down over here where I c'n keep half an eye on ye."

Well, damn. "You really are in favor of a big Potter family reunion, aren't you?" He commented cheerfully as he sat in the wooden chair just next to the big desk. _When will that poison kick in from now? A half an hour, then an hour more until I die?_ Harry made an aborted twitch towards his wand, but honestly- his morals weren't quite degraded enough to attack a young woman just doing her job. _Besides, _Harry cheered himself, _maybe this will be the last time I die._

The first Auror that crashed through the door, a hopeful panic on his face, was not someone he'd expected, however. As it was, he was _just_ able to keep his composure as Frank Longbottom smashed clumsily into the room, followed by an unknown Auror with bright eyes and dark skin, as the lead man's own gaze landed on the young boy. "Harry," he breathed, "You're so much... Bigger."

"And here I was, thinking I was smaller," Harry returned, not dishonestly. The man looked quite a bit like Neville in his prime, his hair was a darker shade of brown and his jawline was sharper, but other than that and their slightly different coloration, Harry could have had Neville standing in front of him right then. Right down to the odd tendency to stumble on nothing.

Frank recovered from his sudden entry and righted himself, clearing his throat once and gesturing to himself and his fellow officer, "Aurors Longbottom and Marley, m'am." He nodded in the teen's direction, "You have reason to believe this is the lost Potter scion and..." He took another glance at the outwardly calm smile on Harry's face, "And I have to say I see why. We'll take him in for a blood test to make sure there's no funny business going on here, unless you've got anything else we need to be informed of, Miss...?"

"Miss Spencer," the teen straightened in her chair at the respectful address from a not-unattractive older man, "And no, that's all, sir."

Auror Marley took Harry's arm firmly, but gently, and his eyes were soft as his gruff voice rolled out, "You'll be safe with us, now, but you'll have to go through some tests; is that okay?"

And the poison better have worked by then. Harry's fingers twitched again, but he kept from drawing. He couldn't trust his instincts anymore; the brain that channeled his soul into this body was broken, or at least lesioned. _Everybody has some minor brain lesions, _Harry counter-reasoned with himself, but the fact wasn't swaying. "Yeah, sure," Harry replied after what he hoped was a short, unnoticeable pause. If the Auror pair suspected him of anything, they were doing well hiding it.

Auror Marley moved him a bit closer to the exit, making a surreptitious gesture in Frank's direction, and Harry noted with amusement that the Auror symbol for "_Stop-with-the-flirting-you-slag_" had not changed in the world-jump he'd gone through. Frank made his hasty goodbyes to the blushing Ms. Spencer, and with a crack, he and Auror Marley disapparated, pulling Harry for an uncomfortable Sidealong. At least it hadn't been as bad as that Info-Pole or whatever it wanted to call itself. Even after decades of magical transport, Harry still wasn't quite keen on using anything but a broomstick or his own two legs. Marley's grip on his arm kept him from making an acquaintance with the ground, but he still felt a bit dizzy as they steered him through the Ministry towards the Forensics and Potionry section of the Aurors' Department. Oh, wait. That was probably just the poison making its way through his system. There was a pins and needles sensation in his toes, like he'd been sitting on them for a while, and the world wasn't looking quite steady.

"-Rry?" Harry looked up to see they'd arrived at some lab within the department and Marley's concerned face swam above him next to a similarly fuzzy Frank. "Harry, did you hear me?"

"I'm sorry, I was a bit lost in thought," Harry smiled sadly, "It's a lot to take in, you know. I never knew my parents could possibly be alive. That is, if I really am the right Harry Potter like you said." Well, his lungs were still in good working order.

The two Aurors shared a look above his head, and Frank leaned down, "To be honest, this blood test is just for the paperwork. I'm positive you're a Potter. They've got a very distinct unruliness in their hair, and you're James down to a T, but for Lily's eyes and smile."

Harry had been prepared to nod, and give a teary smile, worthy of a young Shirley Temple, but Frank's last reference stopped him short, and he found himself repeating blankly, "Her smile?" No one had ever said that before. His eyes, sure, they were all her, but everything else had always belonged to James. He had her smile?

A mental shake of the head; he'd be seeing his _real _parents soon enough if he could just speed up the poison working through him and if the Powers didn't decide to screw up this perfect escape. _Those are two big 'if's, _some part of Harry reminded him warningly. _Oh, shut up, _Harry thought to himself, and turned his attention back to the scene only for a small prick at his arm to force a jump. "What was-" The Forensics Auror in faded yellow robes held up a small sampling of blood in answer, and Harry snapped his mouth shut again. It was a wonder he hadn't started to convulse yet; he was pretty sure that had been somewhere in the symptoms list of the poison, but instead here he was with fuzzy vision and vertigo. Had he bought a dud?

"It's him," The yellow-robed wizard confirmed, walking back into the room. _And when had he walked out? _Harry wondered. Actually, that had seemed far too quick for any sort of analysis, and Harry was now on a chair leaning against the wall with Frank and Marley hovering by his side. Had they moved him? "You were right; we did find something else in there." When had they said anything about that? He must have missed time.

"Harry," Marley started, taking Harry's shoulders and looking him in the eye, "Did anyone offer you any strange drinks, or any food at all, while you were in the Alley?"

"Not in the Alley," Harry began, mind racing as if through jello until it settled on a good scapegoat, "My Uncle gave me some rainbow drink after I messed up the weeding. It was awful, s'I ran 'way." Slurring of words was supposed to be one of the final symptoms, right? Because it was getting closer to shutting down the brain?

"That... Can we... in?" The world was getting farther and farther, or was that just the sounds? A volume dial in Harry's head was slowly wobbling towards mute and the curtains were being drawn across his vision. He tipped his head back against the wall, despite the garbled protests.

"M'tired," he tried to explain for a last time, as his eyes shut and the pins-and-needles that had taken over his body went numb.


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer: I do not own anything you might recognize, but I am not earning anything monetary from this endeavor.**

**I'm pleasantly surprised at how much positive feedback this story is getting! Thanks be to all of ye :)**

* * *

**Last time:**

_"M'tired," he tried to explain for a last time, as his eyes shut and the pins-and-needles that had taken over his body went numb._

"Thank god," someone breathed the next moment, "The antidote worked."

_Antidote? _Harry shot up, glaring at whomever the comment had originated from, intending to chew them out within an inch of their lives for such a- a- Big, green eyes stared at him from the side of his hospital bed and someone held his hand on the other side. _Is that a mirror and why am I a woman? _His Common Sense kicked in with a caustic, _Go to hell for stupidity; it's your doppelganger's parents, _but only the _nya-na-nya-na-boo-boo _tone really registered as Harry came to the same conclusion. "Mum?" A glance to the other side, and his older, identical twin came into view, with large, gushing tears making dual trails down his cheeks, "Dad?"

"How can he recognize us?" Lily whispered anxiously to the yellow robes hovering just out of Harry's vision.

_Shit. _While the forensics Auror fed the Potters some bull about possible remnants from their one year together, or the Dursleys having pictures (apparently, Harry's mention of an Uncle had prompted a more in-depth investigation, and the Dursleys had been found, entirely shocked that the Potters were alive and with no memories of a rainbow potion or the initial kidnapping. After some surreptitious Legilimency, the dumbfounded Aurors watched as they happily signed muggle custody back to Lily and her husband), Harry burrowed sullenly into his blankets. It was too late now, but if these two replaced the parents he was _meant _to see in the afterlife, he was going to find those stupid Powers and stab them through the eye with that pen they'd been scribbling with when he met them. Then, tell them they "weren't ready for that, were they?" just to rub it in. It may have been worrisome to the others in the room if Harry rubbed his hands together and cackled, so he kept it on the inside and twitched his fingers towards his wand. Surprisingly, he still had it on his person; they obviously hadn't expected him to own one yet.

"Harry, I'm so glad you know who we are, and I promise we will never, _ever _let something like this happen to you again," James looked like he was gearing up for another cry, and, wide-eyed, Harry cast about for something to stop the impending waterworks.

"...I know," he smiled, weakly, and James burst into tears, grabbing Harry in a bear hug that lifted him off the hospital cot while Lily squeezed the hand she still held with a smile. He endured it for a good minute. Alright, 45 seconds. But it was suffocating! These weren't _his _parents, and he hadn't needed parenting in a good century. In fact, he actually _did _most of the parenting he'd ever experienced! So he could be forgiven for squirming out of his sobbing DNA-providers' anaconda-death-hold. They made to lunge at him again, but he got his hands up in time with a squeaked, "Stop!"

"What's wrong, honey?" Lily made as if to take his hand again, but stopped herself just in time, her hand retreating to her lap as the concern shone blindingly from her motherly face, "Are you injured?"

"I don't like..." Harry made a strange flapping gesture to encompass the both of his parents and settled on, "Touchy-feely." And strangely, when it came to these two, it was true. With his own kids, he'd always been the guy to go to for a hug or a toss in the air, but this world seemed to have thrown him right back into his pre-Hogwarts mentality of _touch is bad. _He was pretty sure he could still offer some sort of comforting touch, but having it happen _to_ him didn't... It didn't feel right. It was suffocating. And Harry knew suffocating from hands-on experience.

"Alright," Lily nodded, shooting a glance at James, which he intercepted like a pro and answered with one of his own. "I'll tell your sister so."

"Wait a tick." Harry turned that sentence over for a moment, as if searching for hidden meaning or a trap door. Finally, his poor, beleaguered brain caught up with reality, "I've got a sister?"

"A real troublemaker of one, too," James confirmed with a fond smile, already distracted.

And with that, Harry had his plan for obscurity back in place.

There had been the basic questioning the Aurors put him through before the Potters could take him home, and the basic bending of the truth Harry employed right back. He'd been with the Dursleys for as long as he could remember. They didn't treat him too badly. He hadn't seen any suspicious figures. He'd learned about Lily and James from an old wedding photo. No one ever came to check on the family. The Dursleys _had _no old family friends. He didn't have many _muggle_ friends, himself.

His elaboration on that one, "I have a muggle best friend named Garrett and Mr. Ollivander is my best magical friend, at the moment," had the Aurors send someone to check out the wandmaker, who'd confirmed the statement with typical creepy glee, but also reassured the Aurors that they'd only met that day. His parents _had_ exchanged another weird glance, but otherwise avoided comment on their son's choice in friends. Granted, they did not yet know Garrett's age or his connection to Harry, but it was still a commendable show of restraint.

The interrogation continued. Yes, he'd left the Dursleys of his own free will. He'd known of Diagon Alley from his aunt's rants. He'd asked Garrett's family to drive him. _Not a lie, _Harry told himself, _Garrett is, in fact, related to himself. _When he'd told them he'd wandered through Diagon Alley on his own after supposedly escaping the place his kidnappers had contained him, his parents' faces had miraculously become less boring. Not long after that, they demanded to bring him home, and as they took up post on either side of him, practically frog-marching him to the public Floo, Harry wondered if his plan to distract them was as foolproof as it seemed.

He was really, _really _counting on James retaining that immaturity he'd been known for. Well, that and little sister being too young to notice.

His parents shuffled him into the house at Godric's Hollow, and nervously showed him around. At first, there'd been a didactic, informative slant, but Harry had gently informed them that the "big blue poles" he'd "accidentally brushed up against" had already filled him in on the family history. _As well as a few other things buried somewhere in my subconscious; although, all the in-depth Potter knowledge comes from my own timeline, _Harry mused to himself as James heaved a suspiciously relieved sigh and Lily poked him with a sharp elbow. He tried to keep smiling, bringing up long ago memories of the time Sirius had offered to take him away from the Dursleys to get the proper expression. They anxiously showed him his room and Harry made the proper exclamations over having his own room and how big it was. James wanted to bring him down to the kitchens and have a private "We Got Harry Back" party, but Lily cut in, saying that Fennel was in bed already and Harry was probably tired as well.

After a hasty confirmation, Harry could tell they still felt unsure how he felt about them. Which, was exactly how Sirius had been all those years ago, and Harry thought he might know how to deal with it. It had to work- his Common Sense agreed with him and everything. The two elder Potters were fidgeting, as if they wanted to go tuck him in or perform some other little show of affection that would just destroy him entirely. "I'm so glad you guys are alive," Harry dashed another quick smile in their direction and entered "his" new room with a quiet click of the door behind him. He was so eager to escape their presence, he missed the way the couple behind him exchanged worried glances in yet another of their infamous silent conversations.

_That was sick and twisted, _Harry decided. If the Powers thought this simulacrum of his parents would be any sort of... Of compensation for being robbed of his one-way ticket into the afterlife, they had another think coming. He didn't really want to get to know these two copies. They'd lived years his real parents had never had, had another _child, _even, and lived with the terrible uncertainty of a stolen son.

Eh. There might have been a slowly rising sense of guilt accompanying Harry's thoughts, but that didn't change his plan. His sister would soon be a complete _prodigy _if Harry

had anything to say about it. When choosing between a strange son that seemed fine, if with a tragic past, and the daughter they had _raised _that would soon require special attention to keep her sudden grasp of magic under control... Well, of course the Potters would try to be fair, try to pay equal attention to both of them.. But, oh, little Fennel's powers would be so very troublesome, and her accidental magic beyond what a young child should do... Harry would suggest that she was too young to understand that having a brother didn't mean losing her parents, imply they were maybe neglecting her a bit, perhaps she was jealous...

Hopefully, it would all fall into place. _No chance, _his Common Sense advised him cheerily, but he paid it no mind.

_Shit. _A few mornings later, Harry was pulling a spoon through his porridge at the breakfast table with a sigh and flicked a bit of it at the brat across from him. She was ten years old with dark red hair and bright green eyes, and looked just like his own daughter.

Except she was spoiled silly.

"Mum! He threw porridge at me!" Fennel cried, pointing dramatically at her elder brother and wiping frantically at the tiny, invisible globlets of porridge with her other hand. She honestly had been looking forward to it when she'd been told her older brother had been found. Her mental image had been of a big, tall guy that would protect her from jerks and teach her cool things, but what she got was a shrimp just a bit shorter than she was that talked like an old man when her parents weren't in the room.

Harry raised his eyes to hers, his spoon deep in the depths of his bowl and his gaze full of concern, "Sorry if I splashed you, Fennel; I'm just so hungry that I forgot my manners."

"No excuse for bad manners but," Lily hmm'd, looking down at Harry's _honest_ chagrin with a stifled fond expression, "I suppose I can let it slide this once."

Fennel pouted, James dragged himself downstairs, and the adults joined them at the table, making idle chitchat with their offspring for an attempt at normalcy and Harry let his mind wander. Interestingly, it was much easier to multitask after he'd been shoved into this body. It was probably the benefit of having more soul than entirely necessary, but it could have just been a slight genetic difference between his original body and this one. Or the fact that he was suddenly much, much younger and, if not in the peak of health, healthier than he had been before. Fennel flipped her hair, looking very much like his little Lily whenever she didn't get her way. It was as if the Powers, knowing that his children would be missing from the complete set of clones, wanted to provide him with as much of a reminder of what he'd lost as they could. _Not lost, _Harry corrected himself firmly. He would die, and he would wait for them in the afterlife. They _would _be reunited, or he would go completely batshit. Which reminded him.

"May I be excused? I've really got to use the loo." Harry gave a bashful fidget, shamelessly taking advantage of his "parents'" desire to make him feel happy and safe with them to escape once more.

"Of course, Harry, go ahead," James nodded, waving him off and Harry left the room, heading up to the far bathroom, located directly across the house from the kitchen. He could always pass it off as still being unfamiliar with the house, and remembering that one best if he was questioned later. In reality, he just didn't want to be within hearing range of the Potters.

Holy heavens. Harry shut the bathroom door and rested his too-small head against it, taking a nice, deep breath and resisting the urge to jump out the small, curtained window. Why was this atmosphere so stifling? Hell, he'd enjoyed his time with _Ollivander _more than this. He'd spent no more than an hour at a time in the Potters' presence, but they were always glancing at him and treating him like a glass figurine. Maybe...

Harry lifted his head from the door; maybe it was because they were treating him like a child. Granted, he _was _sort of a child. And he did rather fancy his flights of childish whimsy. But no one else he'd spent any real amount of time with in this world had bothered treating him as such. The Dursleys had never treated him like a human, Garrett had always known he was slightly off, and Ollivander seemed to think him some kind of peer. Not that he'd spent a significant amount of time with Ollivander, but it was true the odd wandmaker hadn't exactly reacted to him as one would a kid.

Enough _angst_, Harry scolded himself, pushing off the door and pacing the small, pastel-toned bathroom with deliberate, quiet steps. Fennel was far too old for his previous plan to work. Plus, the amount of time he'd have to spend in her presence would kill him. With Garrett, Harry had been fully aware of all the differences in physique and personality between the elder man and James Jr. (here, his Common Sense snorted, _oh, really?_), but Fennel was so... So very physically similar to little Lily ("I'm over a century old, too, Dad; stop calling me little," Harry could recall her protesting once towards the end) when she really had been _little_.

There were wards on this house that detected any sort of serious harm done to its inhabitants, too. That was one skill that didn't go away with his minimized magical core; Harry could feel the damn things pressing on him the moment he walked in the door. Like the wards were just _waiting _for him to hurt himself. With the way James and Lily had left him on his own more than once, he could assume that they either weren't tied very closely to the wards, or that they assumed the wards were detecting his intent to hurt the other occupants of the house. Harry hoped for the former, but anticipated the latter. Lily had always been only a room away when she'd left him alone with Fennel, always just within range of a scream, and she _had _reappeared suspiciously quickly when Fennel had let out an irritated "Oh!" of surprise at Harry's apparent unwillingness to let her see his wand. He'd learned that lesson with Albus. Even allowing a glimpse could turn an innocent, awestruck child into an ill-willed, devious thief. Granted, Albus was the only one of his children to ever nick his wand but he'd stuck to his guns through a string of grandchildren, and not a single one ever tried for his beloved magic stick so long as their first glimpse of it was after they had their own. Ginny called him biased, but Ron called him a genius.

His redheaded pal _had _been laughing at the time, but no matter.

_I digress_, Harry rolled his eyes with a quiet, sardonic bark of laughter. He was still a nostalgic old man on the inside, after all, rambling even without an audience. Though he was the only one of his friends who had fallen victim to that particular stereotype.

Maybe he could just get the wards to kill him. James and Lily would notice _that_, probably, but if it was the last death, he wouldn't have to deal with the consequences. No; no, he couldn't. Not where a kid (no matter how spoiled) could so easily find his body. Plus, she'd likely never visit this loo again. Water closets would be ruined for her and Fennel would pee in a chamberpot for the rest of her life, bathing in a engorgio'd bucket until at long last old age eliminated her last defenses and any children she had would just plop her bodily in a bathtub and scrub her screaming form twice a week. Albus had gotten a color-changing hex to the face when he'd tried bathing his own _poor, decrepit _father. Harry had washed himself since he was old enough not to drown in two inches of water and would not be surrendering the privilege upon reaching 162, thank you very much. ...Harry tilted his head to pull his thoughts back in the right direction.

Point being, he would not kill himself in Godric's Hollow. The irony alone would drag him kicking and screaming back to life. But he couldn't live here, either.

_Just make it through to Hogwarts? _He cajoled himself futilely. No, he couldn't bare staying around those three living reminders of his stolen afterlife for another second. How could he get out of this, though? There was no way an escape attempt wouldn't be noticed by the wards and countered by the elder Potters, and it wasn't like he really wanted to _hurt _any of them trying to get away. It wasn't their fault he couldn't stand them. What connections did he have right now? He'd met the Longbottoms, a Marley, Olli-

Harry tapped his fingers against the sink counter pensively.

_No, no, no, _Common Sense badgered, _I know exactly where you're going with this and I don't like it. _Harry brushed off the lingering misgiving with a simple mental image of Li- Fennel's smug little face. _But- _A mental dump of the accumulated tension and upsetting memories for good measure and Harry had his Common Sense firmly under control once again. _I don't think Common Sense can get "out of control," _it murmured sullenly and weakly under the weight of the memories of little Lily at Fennel's age before it went quiet.

Ollivander had said he wanted a friend. Ergo, Ollivander was lonely. Ergo, Ollivander wanted to be around other people who wouldn't die easily. Ergo- _Oh, Merlin curse it. _Harry would send off a little proposition to the old wandmaker and see how he reacted, then bring it up with the proper dramatics to his- the Potters. Almost entirely certain his plan would work, Harry's mood lifted dramatically and the damn buzzing wards eased slightly in their incessant closeness. Practically humming to himself, Harry twiddled through his pockets for a bit of paper and wandered out of the bathroom to acquire a quill and ink. A bit of doggerel nursery magic could probably get his missive to the wandmaker within the day and with any luck, he'd be gone by tomorrow evening.

He sent off the paper with a rushed, toneless recitation of, 'Oh, blow the winds o'er the ocean; oh, blow the winds o'er the sea; oh, blow the winds o'er the ocean, and bring back my bonnie to me." The sentiment was not exact, but such was the way with this limited wandless magic. Though he finally had a wand once more at hand, he did not like the way the wards pressed around him when his fingers twitched for it, and toeing the line by using it so blatantly within the house wards seemed to be asking for unnecessary trouble. _Sharp thinking, _his Common Sense commented with a tone of honest surprise. Harry wondered for only a moment if blasting away a bit more of his frontal cortex would eliminate the part of him that insisted on disassociating from the whole but shook his head. _I'm probably not that crazy, yet._

It was literally thirty minutes later when a stray gust of wind blew in under the Potter's front door and made its lazy way to the sitting room, where this universe's Potters plus transdimensional guest had retired after dinner officially concluded. James was trying to keep Fennel's attention with a story about his day, but the girl obviously had no interest in how the Aurors' office worked and he was losing steam fast. Like a popped hot air balloon. Harry, on the other hand, was the subject of most of the little girl's attention as she shot glares and rolled eyes in his general direction between her father's increasingly pleading attempts at engaging her interest. Harry mostly ignored this since Lily was refusing to let his attention wander as she kept up an almost one-sided conversation peppered with questions and queries and "I was wondering's" about Harry's life and hobbies and friends and...

Harry wondered if James was really in Interrogation or if that was sort of like the Black-Pettigrew deal and Lily was the true professional.

Anyway, in the midst of all this, an innocent scrap of parchment floated further into the room, landing with a sudden precision in Harry's lap. He'd picked up the message, preparing himself for the possibility of an outright no, or more questions on what exactly would be happening, or even an acceptance with questions about how to go about it, and read,

_When can you get here? :)_

Harry stared at the parchment as if the letters would rearrange into the real message and for once he and his Common Sense were entirely on the same page as they echoed, "_:)" ? _Had Harry really thought this plan through enough? Maybe he needed to reassess his options.

When Lily realized her recently recovered son was holding a mysterious bit of paper that appeared without her notice, she paled, understandably panicked, and then slapped the message out of Harry's hands. "Don't just pick up magic paper!" She scolded unthinkingly, her voice strangely weak in comparison with her word choice and automatic finger waggle, "You want to be kidnapped again?"

"Ah, I knew who that was from," Harry replied, his hands still out in front of him as he turned over that creepy little smiley face one more time in his mind's eye.

"Where are you going?" Fennel asked curiously, holding the message she'd recovered while her parents were silently freaking out over Harry's brush with danger.

James snatched the parchment out of her hands and read it once without registering it, opened his mouth to speak, and then let his jaw snap shut as his widened eyes darted back to the missive for a second and third read-over. "Is this," James' voice stumbled and he cleared his throat awkwardly, "Are you communicating with your kidnappers?"

"What?" Lily surged forward and grabbed the message from James' hand, and after hearing it again in another's voice, Harry could confirm that the warble in James' tone had been betrayal. She looked up, "Harry?"

Well, he hadn't betrayed anyone. Some part of him still stung at the implication, but he could be civil and sort out the misunderstanding. Maybe it'd make them more accepting of his request, since it was much better in comparison. "It's not like I know who kidnapped me," Harry began, pseudo-logically, "So I can't really answer that question." James looked a little green about the gills as Lily's fist clenched. _Good show, _his Common Sense mocked and Harry had to admit he hadn't exactly tackled that with the maturity he'd been aiming for. _Try again. _"That's Ollivander, though. And I doubt he's ever kidnapped me."

"Mr. Ollivander?" James repeated, looking back down at the unembellished handwriting and creepy little smiley face.

"He's one of my best friends," Harry defended flatly. _Come on, now, pull yourself together. _If he thought it through a bit more carefully, it wasn't really that shocking. Ollivander always had a penchant for creepiness and he'd been counting on the older man's enthusiasm for company. A shake of the head and Harry was all business once again, "I was wondering if I could spend the rest of summer with Ollivander, to see how a wand shop really functions and help him out a bit since he's so lonely."

The elder Potters exchanged a troubled glance and James started hesitantly, "We thought we might use this time to get to know one another, Harry. I'm not sure-"

"Of course. We could meet in the Alley or at Ollivander's," Harry cut in, pulling from his other-world knowledge and deciding that the two Ollivanders likely weren't that different at all, "That man really enjoys entertaining."

"Harry, wouldn't you rather stay with us?" Lily began, almost pleadingly, as if she knew the true answer would be in the negative, but hoped for the best.

How to phrase this nicely. "I think it'd be better for all of us to have some space," the soothing tone was exactly how Harry used to tell Albus and little Lily that James Jr. would be staying at Hogwarts for this break or that, "So we could get to know each other without your stress about a stranger in your home or any sense of obligation to one another."

"Harry, we're your _parents,_" James berated, looking just a little lost at the way this conversation was going, but Lily cut in with a slight frown.

"Maybe you're right, that there's some tension living so close when we don't really... When we don't really know each other." A pensive stare at Harry's poker face and Lily let out a tiny, bitter laugh, "You _are _our son, and there's a part of me that's saying only your mother could know you best, but you're right. There's another part of me that looks at you and sees a stranger, since the son I knew was a babe that smiled at everyone and the son I've got is much older, and has gone through so much without me..." Lily glanced down and Harry realized with mounting horror that she was about to cry, "I _hate _whoever did this; I hate that we aren't... I hate that so much time was lost." Tears were trailing down her cheeks now, and Harry noted with slight vindication that neither Fennel nor James seemed very comfortable with this situation either. Her voice, when it breached the still air again was little more than a whisper, "Are you sure this is for the best, Harry?"

_Oh, definitely, after that display, _Common Sense put in, _all I can do here is fail to live up to your expectations. _Who wanted an old man for a son when they'd expected a young child? While Harry was certainly more childish and spritely than other men his mental age, he'd never be as dependent and trusting and... light as the Potters deserved. _Well, if I hadn't come around, their son would be a drooling husk, _Harry scratched his knee in a nervous fidget, _but I'm still an impostor. _"I think so," he finally managed, clearing his throat while his eyes avoided the two Potters trying to catch his gaze. It would take a day or so for the Potters to truly give in, but the tide had turned in Harry's favor that night.

* * *

**OMAKE (meaning a fun tidbit not included in the storyline):**

Fennel and Harry stared at each other over the coffee table.

"Fennel," Harry started thoughtfully, "That's some sort of yellow-flowered celery, right?"

"It's a flower," Fennel corrected tightly, "that means 'worthy of all praise.'" Her hands clenched into little, white-knuckled fists.

Harry and Fennel stared at each other over the coffee table.

"That makes much less sense," Harry pointed out.

The shriek of indignant fury covered up Harry's repetitive "ow"s as Fennel beat him senseless with a throw pillow.


	5. Chapter 5

**Disclaimer: As per FUA, no monetary gain has resulted from this story, and all Harry Potter places and people belong to J K Rowling and co.**

**Hey, readers and reviewers, guess what? You're cool.**

**Chapter warning(s): Frank Longbottom, the usual suicidal wishes, ridiculous!Harry mood swings, old men rambling at each other, etc.**

**Last time:**

_It would take a day or so for the Potters to truly give in, but the tide had turned in Harry's favor that night._

No matter how Frank turned it over, he was sure something was off about the Potter case, but he couldn't quite put his finger on what. The boy really was Harry Potter; his blood had passed both the forensic Aurors' and later, Gringotts' tests. Frank, upon laying eyes on him, had had no doubt of that. There was something in how Harry had interacted with his parents, that strange flicker of unease, but no surprise, and the recognition? He'd heard the healers' explanations and Harry's confirmation that he'd seen their picture before, but it didn't seem to click. Lily and James were thrilled to have him back, and Harry should have been thrilled to find his parents after living with Lily's relatives for so long, but... Just today, James had dropped by on his way to his own office, and told him in hushed, shame-filled tones that Harry didn't feel comfortable living with them, and would rather stay with _Ollivander, _of all people. He had nothing against the man, of course. In fact, Ollivander was a _good _man, but he was... _Strange._

Frank shook his head and set a stack of reports aside, pushing at his forehead with the palm of his hand. Something didn't make sense here, but it could wait. He had murderers and thieves to take care of, after all.

Harry rubbed his wand at the tip of his nose warily; he'd felt a sneeze coming on- possibly from the fumes of the wandshop- but it had died mysteriously and he didn't trust the sudden ceasefire. Ollivander was flitting about the shelves, humming happily to himself, and Harry sat on the stool behind the cash register to watch him, still rubbing at his nose with a suspicious air. His parents had held themselves together when they'd dropped him off, promising to visit the very next day (and the next day, and the next), but Ollivander hadn't quite been able to read the atmosphere, and had burbled cheerfully about how he had the extra room in his apartment above the shop and that Harry could stay as long as he wanted, even for the next few holidays, if the whim struck him. Even now, as he creepily vanished into the darkness of the shelves, to spontaneously appear later across the room, his happy humming emanated from the darkness like a cheerful lethifold was hanging amongst the stacks of wands.

A thought occurred to Harry, and he called into the shadows between the shelves, "What's your first name, by the way?"

Ollivander popped out from a shelf across the shop from the one he'd been at a second previously and grinned, "No one's asked me that in a very long time." _Well, that's nice, Ollivander; I'm glad we're bonding. _Harry gestured for elaboration, and Ollivander replied, "I'm Garrick."

Garrick and Garrett. There weren't any complications a good memory and quick tongue wouldn't mend, but... "That won't do."

"No?" Ollivander had returned to cheerfully checking and dusting his precious wands.

"No," Harry repeated, a little surprised at his own firmness, "I've already got a Garrett in my life, you'll just have to be Olly." Maybe he missed Garrett a little more than he thought he would. He wondered, briefly, if he could convince Ollivander to let him go to muggle London and find a payphone someday soon.

"I've always been partial to Rick," Ollivander mused, "But I suppose Olly is an acceptable nickname."

"Darn tootin'," Harry nodded, crossing his arms over his chest and settling back into his chair, "And what in the world is 'darn tootin'?'"

"Don't worry," Ollivander reassured him, "It's probably just a nonsense phrase imbedded into your behaviour by your previous captors in order to find you again."

A blink, "People really do that? I read a story once where that happened."

"Oh, yes," the elder man nodded, "I still have a quirk where I sneak up on anyone I meet that was imbedded by some organization or another some, ah, three hundred? Yes, I think three hundred years ago." That explained a lot. A little of Ollivander's creepiness had eased, and Harry found himself more willing to swap stories with the eerie ancient.

"In a past life, I met a wizard who kidnapped muggles for the sole purpose of giving them the compulsion to quack like a duck any time they saw someone wearing red," Harry said, and Ollivander laughed, ignoring or accepting the reference to a past life without question.

"What a marvelous pastime!"

"I was almost sad to put him away."

The rest of the morning passed similarly as the two old men rambled on at each other. Harry'd never felt this unwary around Ollivander in this life or the past one, but he supposed, too, that he hadn't spent as much consecutive time around the silvery-eyed man before, either. _I didn't even need to point that out,_ Common Sense put in proudly, and Harry rolled his eyes.

"-and that beautiful stained glass window smashed into a million shining pieces between the groom and bride," Ollivander was saying somewhere in the stacks when the door opened. Harry, seated at the usually unoccupied front desk, went completely unnoticed as the Malfoy males entered warily, searching the shop for a suddenly silent Ollivander. For once, Harry could actually watch the process of an Ollivander-style heart attack, as the elder man slid silently from the stacks, through the shadowed edges of the store, and ended up directly behind the men, hunched before the front door. "Ah, Mr. Malfoy," he whisper-breathed, and as the two Malfoys jumped, Harry realized Ollivander hadn't been using the terrifying method of speaking for a little over an hour. He dearly hoped it wouldn't take another half a day to push Ollivander's speech engines back to normal working conditions. "And young Mr. Malfoy," Ollivander acknowledged, "I have been expecting you."

"Of course," Draco replied automatically, and then paused, clearly conflicted, "I suppose." _Yes, Draco, _Harry urged mentally, _believe! Believe in the precognitive power which resides within those disturbing silver eyes! _Common Sense had the er, good sense, to refrain from commenting and ruining Harry's bit of fun. Another thrashing of sad memories was not its idea of a good time.

"You'll be wanting a wand," Ollivander continued as if he had just realized this fact, and vanished again into the stacks. A moment of silence passed, as Draco began to comprehend the true reason his father hadn't allowed him to get his wand alone.

"Father," he began slowly, voice hushed so as to escape the odd man's notice, "Is he always so- ?"

"Yes," Lucius cut in, quietly and curtly, both hands on the head of his cane, gripping the end of the hidden wand with white knuckles, "And he likely always will be."

"Which brings about the question of why Voldemort never dissected him," Harry mused to himself. At the startled looks in his direction from the two blond men before him, he came to a shocking conclusion. "Did I say that out loud?" _Yes, _Common Sense put in, _And that last bit, too. _"Well, then."

"He has spawned himself offspring!" Lucius shrieked at an impressive pitch, pulling Draco by the shoulder to the other side of the room, "I warned them of this! But they said he was too old!" Taking both of Draco's shoulders, he looked into the boy's eyes, "A man is _never _too old."

At this point, Harry was relatively clear on Lucius' mental state and had slowly emulated the crazy man by edging carefully away.

"Oh, now look what you did!" Draco exclaimed in the escaping Potter's direction. As this was not quite the expected response, Harry stopped dead in his tracks to face the boy.

"What, now?"

Draco gestured furiously for a moment at his father, who was still shell-shocked and wide-eyed, "You sent him into one of his fits! He did his whole calming thing outside the shop, and managed to make it through whatever that Ollivander bloke intended his entrance to be, and then you just ruin the whole thing by popping out of the darkness like- like some boggart!" Lucius reached out a hesitant hand and Draco absently grabbed it, losing steam at the gesture, "I just wanted to spend time with my father." A bit of the knowledge the big blue Info Poles had sunk into Harry's subconscious broke loose and floated up. Oh, looked like the Lucius here was suffering from the aftereffects of a long held Imperius curse. For once, the Malfoys seemed to be innocent- or, er, as innocent as Malfoys can get.

"My apologies," Harry ceased creeping from the room, and stared at the kicked puppy expression on Draco's face, suppressing mounting horror. _He must have donated practically 90% of Scorpius' DNA for their sad faces to be so similar. _He'd never seen that expression on _his _Malfoy's face before, but it must have been one of the butterfly effects of the switch in targets that long ago Halloween. Lucius had obviously had very little to do with Draco's actual upbringing this time around, since Draco shrugged inelegantly at Harry's apology and muttered his forgiveness as Ollivander wandered out of the stacks with three wands.

"You Black stock," he murmured, "never have any patience for the thrill of the chase." Did Ollivander _intentionally_ throw people through wrong wand after wrong wand for the hell of it? _I guess you need _some _sort of hobby to keep from losing your mind after how long Olly's been around. _Afore-mentioned man noticed Harry's furrowed brow and winked conspiratorially.

Ollivander placed the first wand in Draco's dominant hand before just as quickly snatching it back and handing over the second wand. This one, he allowed Draco to wave, and an explosion of apple blossoms wafted down through the air like too much confetti.

"Ten inches, apple wood, unicorn hair," Ollivander listed off promptly, completely belying his misty tone, "A bit swishy, probably good for Charms work and unlikely to have much synergy with the dark arts."

"Why would I care about that?" Draco asked, looking at his wand in awe while his other hand stayed firmly around his father's.

Ollivander allowed a pleased smirk to flit briefly in the scared-witless elder Malfoy's direction, whisper-breathing, "Why, indeed."

"That's really creepy, Olly," Harry put in, once again back at the little-used front desk, ringing up the younger Malfoy's wand.

With a narrowing of silver eyes, Ollivander smiled cheerfully, "Why don't you help young Mr. Malfoy escort his father back home?" Harry almost whined out a plaintive, _Do I have to? _but Common Sense took hold of his shoulders, turned him 90 degrees and marched him over to the Malfoys, only returning his self control once Lucius's arm was clutched in both hands and he was helping Draco maneuver Lucius out the front door. _Trippy, _Harry decided, _that was extremely trippy._

They led the poor man in silence down the Alley, and Draco gestured towards the public Floo point, receiving a nod in return. Harry pushed while Draco pulled and with their combined efforts, Lucius and Draco were deposited in the eternally green flames of the fixed Floo point. Before they left, Draco shot the other boy a sharp look, "This doesn't mean I'm not still irritated about what's happened." _The more things change, _Harry thought wryly, but Draco's next words stopped him flat. "But thank you." They'd been softly spoken, almost murmured, but clear enough that Harry's mind was still ringing with it after Draco called out "Malfoy Manor!" and vanished in a flare of fire. Draco had never, in all their years and years of history, thanked Harry for anything. Not when he'd testified in his defense, or watched Scorpius along with the hordes of Weasleys he already had in hand, or arrested the extremists camped outside his manor.

_Well, there goes person-to-torment number one off my list, _Harry decided disappointedly. This Draco was more Scorpius than Lucius- basically, more in need of hugs than torment (Though hugs may well be a form of torment for the boy). In fact, Harry was wondering if he could bring himself to torment _any _of the defenseless, adorable Hogwarts children at all. Shaking his head in wonder, Harry made his way back to the wand shop, and was pleasantly surprised when Olly not only was visible at first glance, but picked up his story right where he'd left off, sans creepy whisper, "I tell you, Harry, that wedding was a disaster."

As the weekend approached, so, too, did Harry's scheduled solo meeting with the Potters. He'd had an idea to make it through, but Olly was being entirely too stubborn.

"Oh, come on, Olly," he wheedled, "it won't be half as fun without you there."

A flash of silver eyes over his spectacles betrayed Olly's skepticism even as he evenly replied, "Why, thank you, Harry, but I do think you might be better off facing your parents on your own. You will, after all, be out-living them by quite a margin, and it's best to have some bonding time saved up for when they're gone." As if foreseeing Harry's desire to fight back, Olly continued, "You have nearly an eternity to spend time with _me_."

Shutting his mouth, Harry sat back down behind the register with a huff. He'd been enjoying himself at Ollivander's, but the approaching Potter visit and the complete lack of deaths since the rainbow potion were putting him on edge. Tension coiled in his gut like a smug snake and he wondered how noticeable it would be if he managed to slip a nice, slow-acting poison into his evening meal. He could eat calmly and then retreat to his bedroom in Olly's second floor apartment, and die in the quiet of his own room. As long as it didn't induce convulsions or scream-inducing pain, he shouldn't be found out.

How to get his hands on one, though…? Aurors patrolled Knockturn Alley, and James had asked Frank to have his squadron keep an eye out specifically for if Harry were to be kidnapped once again and smuggled out through the shady Alley. Plus, if it didn't work and _was _discovered… Well, Harry didn't have a handy scapegoat available, unless he wanted to play the stupid card and claim he accepted food or drink from a total stranger whom he could not identify again on the street.

The calm, rational thing to do would be to simply wait until he was in a better position. Harry was sure of this. It was even the _right _thing to do. Problem being, his veins seemed to _itch _as the blood passed through them with the stress of avoiding another suicide.

With a huff of resignation, Harry sank his plans for further self harm down into the depths of his mind, corking the little hole they settled in for good measure. He might be in this world for a _very long time_, and though his primary concern was shortening that period, the boredom he'd endure throughout it was a close second. Nothing said boring like a padded cell and guards that asked for your belt and shoelaces.

Come to think of it, he didn't even _have _a belt. After escaping the Dursleys with practically just the clothes on his back, he'd had to get a wardrobe, and the Potters had filled an armoire with robes, which, in wizarding fashion, didn't quite involve trousers. Luckily, Lily's muggle background came in handy and at the least underpants had been included in the purchase, against James' misgivings.

"He'll be teased if anyone ever notices," he'd warned when Lily added them to the order. The two muggle-raised Potters there exchanged glances and the purchase stood.

Harry shook his thoughts back into order.

He just had to survive another outing with his parent-clones and their pustule of a daughter. Pausing, Harry rapped his own knuckles against the wandshop's counter, _Bad Harry. _That thought had been harsher than he expected from himself. Could he blame it on brain damage or were his morals fully decayed? "Why are you even _experiencing _decay?" he asked them aloud, and rapped his knuckles again when he realized he'd been waiting for a response.

"Harry!" James exploded through the doorway, Fennel draped like a sack of potatoes over his shoulder and looking around the wandshop with reluctant interest, Lily bringing up the rear. The elder Potter male zeroed in on his errant offspring and tousled his hair. Suppressing a violent reaction, Harry buckled down and bore it until James let up, glancing about curiously, "Where's Olli-"

"Hello, Mr. Potter," Ollivander breathed next to the badly startled man, walking past to the counter as if that had been his intended destination from the very start. "Mrs. Potter," he nodded to a smiling Lily, and then to Fennel, "Littlest Potter."

"Hello, Mr. Ollivander," Lily replied, "We're going to take Harry out to lunch."

"Yes, he told me all about it," Ollivander nudged Harry to the side and shuffled through a box hidden under the counter before coming up with what looked like a dead bowtruckle of indeterminate reddish tree. The red-brown little stick man was in very good shape, aside from being dead. "I do hope you enjoy your bonding… Family is so important…" He wandered off into the shadows, abandoning Harry to his parents with that unassuming good bye.

"Where are we going?" Harry asked, hopping over the counter and heading towards the door. If anything, maybe he could keep the conversation about them, or hurry things along with his own positioning.

"Arbor S. Ente Park," Fennel muttered from her spot over James' shoulder.

"We're going on a picnic," James elaborated excitedly.

"Do you go on picnics often?" Harry opened the door as a hint, and the Potter family streamed outside. Thankfully, they began to walk, because Harry had never been to any Arbor S Ente Park before, and wouldn't know the first thing about getting there.

"Yes," Fennel grouched simultaneously with her father's disappointed, "No."

"We go on picnics maybe twice a month," Lily put in, and held out a hand to Harry as they approached the Apparition point. Trying not to hesitate, Harry grabbed the female Potter's hand with his head turned away. Maybe if he couldn't _see _her, it wouldn't bother him so much to be _touching _her. _Oh, yes, because that's the mature way of going about it, _Common Sense grumbled, crossing imaginary arms in a fit of pique. Luckily, Lily Apparated (after a warning Harry hadn't heard or paid attention to) and Common Sense found itself feeling as Harry was- far too queasy to snark.

They landed in a flower garden, with a variety of swaying, dancing flowers singing quietly to themselves under their breaths in a ocean-like murmur of bells and soft voices that ebbed and flowed from the pastel masses. Obscenely tall, arching trees cloaked the park in shadow, but the vines coating their trunks and threading through the singing flowers glowed pale blues and pinks, keeping back the dark. Even Harry's queasiness faded in the face of it.

"The Ente family funded this park," Lily was saying as James whipped out a picnic basket from who knows where and laid out a blanket with Fennel. "They were celebrating Fabian Prewitt and Arbor Ente's wedding after You Know Who was defeated. It's a long-standing tradition of theirs to create a garden or preserve part of a forest when a family member is born, married, or dies."

"Boring talk over now," James interjected, taking their wrists and bringing them over to the picnic blanket. He pulled them down into a sitting position and asked, seriously, "So, what are you learning at Ollivander's, Harry?" The conversation continued like a progress report from then on as they ate, and Harry slowly came to the conclusion that James was dealing with Harry's estrangement by thinking of it as an apprenticeship in the making. It made sense, since pure blood tradition pre-Hogwarts was to form an apprenticeship around age eleven, and the custom had survived in pockets of the UK even after Hogwarts and smaller schools were founded.

Speaking of, "Am I going to Hogwarts?"

James and Lily fixed him with the same look of near disgust at the very idea of an alternative, replying simultaneously, "Of _course._"

Holding his hands in front of him defensively, Harry continued, "I just hadn't gotten my letter yet, and Olly told me that's how you all do these things, so I thought maybe I wasn't enrolled…" The last of the plates floated back into their respective containers.

"Actually, I received your letter on your eleventh birthday," Lily said, and James took that as his cue to begin digging around in his pocket, pulling out some small, brightly-colored cubes the size of dice, "And we weren't with you, then, so we'd decided to celebrate it now," Lily produced the letter from somewhere in her robes and James resized the boxes until they were wrapped presents sitting between Harry and the Potters, "Happy birthday, Harry."

"Ta da!" James exclaimed happily, and Fennel had a smirk pulling at her lips at Harry's blank shock. The moment wore on, though, and the Potters' amusement at Harry's reaction faded.

"Harry?" Lily asked hesitantly, touching his arm. Once she made contact, Harry sprang to life, scrabbling back from the touch. _This is too strange, _Harry's mind spun rapidly, buzzing with thought, _I'm sitting here celebrating my birthday with the pseudo-Potters and all I could think was that this was the first time I'd celebrated with my _parents_? Really? _Common Sense was blissfully silent. _I am a _grown man _and I do _not _need these mental issues. _The Potters were the parents of his biological body, yeah, but _his parents _had _died for him_. Even once slipping up in his own mind was a time too many. "Harry?" Her voice had spiked in pitch as her concern rose, but she didn't touch him again. _Focus, _Common Sense reminded him tentatively.

"Oh, jeez," Harry laughed weakly. "I don't suppose we can just pretend that didn't happen?"

"Hmm, well, _no_," Fennel said, crossing her little arms over her chest.

"I've just… Never had a birthday with the Dursleys," he ad-libbed, using his previous life for inspiration. The Potters shot him a strange look as one, and Harry realized how that must sound, "I mean, they just didn't recognize it, and I wasn't expecting- I don't know why I wasn't expecting- it's- _Merlin hang it_. Sort of really hit me that the Potters are not a dead line here; you guys are really _alive_."

"You're a little _slow_, aren't-"

"_Fen_nel!" James interjected, sounding vaguely horrified, but Harry laughed again, the sound coming out more naturally this time as he calmed down.

"Yes, I can be, at that," he agreed easily. _One slip doesn't mean you're replacing your parents, _Common Sense whispered, clearly not ready to push it with its landlord just yet. Fennel gave him a measuring glance, arms still defensively crossed, and nudged a gift towards him with her foot.

"Well if you're done with that, open this stuff so I can go home."

Lily and James stared at their youngest child as if seeing her for the first time. Harry wondered if this was to be the moment they realized they'd spoiled her utterly and decided not to ruin it with words.

"Go on," she urged, and Harry stifled a hysterical giggle, but obeyed, opening the one she'd moved over to him quickly and efficiently, though he wanted to chuck the unopened box at the Potters and flee.

_Just because you've never done this with _your _parents still doesn't mean- _Common Sense abruptly cut off when Harry leveled a pointy-edged memory spear at the dissociated part of himself. _Not. Talking. About it. Now. _"This looks handy," Harry said aloud, turning the book labeled, _Defend Your Friends and Slow Your Foes, _over to read the summary. It seemed to contain explanations on how to use basic transfiguration, charms, hexes, and counters in self defense. Harry could guess what had prompted this purchase and thoughtfully didn't make a kidnapping joke on top of his freak out just previously.

Fennel impatiently pushed the second of the three boxes over, saying imperiously, "Mum told me to say this one's from me."

Uncaring spoilt brats really were very convenient ways to speed up an outing. The elder Potters, who had been slowly recovering, were struck once more into silence.

"You don't spend much time with kids your age, do you?" Harry asked pleasantly even as he obligingly opened the box under Fennel's sudden scowl. As soon as he did, however, the contents began to flash and whistle, and Harry closed the box hastily on the Sneakoscope. _I'm extremely trustworthy, dammit. _Now, James and Lily had moved their incredulous gaze to Harry and he could feel an involuntary flush creeping up his neck. "I… might have set up a bucket of water over Olly's back room before I left." He didn't bother reopening the box to prove his statement (it was a lie, anyway; the damn thing would likely keep going off around him for as long as he wasn't a native of this universe) and set it aside. This was quite a lot of revelation for the poor Potters. Their son had never had a birthday celebrated before; their daughter was a spoilt brat; that same son was evidently Sneakoscope-verified as untrustworthy… At least they seemed unwilling to question his excuse.

Fennel pushed the last box over, "I figured."

Whether she figured he was untrustworthy or figured he'd pranked Ollivander somehow, Harry didn't know and wouldn't ask; at this point he was just grateful for her unflappable obstinance.

"Oh, I detect a theme." Harry wished he'd kept his mouth shut; he'd _just _decided not to make any kidnapping jokes. A foe-glass stared up at him, and at the moment it contained only vague shadows, far off in the distance. Huh. Maybe because all of his foes were locked away in a separate universe or dead?

Fortunately, his ill-timed humor didn't seem to make an impact on his shell shocked elders.

"Can we go home, now?" Fennel pushed.

xo0O0ox

Frank listened quietly as James poured out his woes at lunch the next day. Setting his drink down, James turned to catch his gaze, "Did you know we were spoiling Fennel?"

Was honesty really the best policy? "...No," he lied, winking at the waitress appreciatively as she refilled his glass before he returned his attention to James.

"Neither did I," he lamented, "and on top of that, growing up Dursley made Harry become all sneaky and evil."

What. Frank's face must have communicated his lack of understanding. James had already explained Harry's odd reaction to their belated birthday celebration and Fennel's insensitivity, but not this. James elaborated, "We got him a Sneakoscope, cause… Yanno…" He waved his hand about the reason but didn't outright say 'kidnapped,' "and when he opened it, the thing went off like a firecracker."

Well, this was interesting. Frank was glad now, that Sirius hadn't been able to make this lunch. It allowed him time to interrogate in peace… Er, time to figure out what was going on, that is. "Do you think he's not Harry?"

A wide-eyed look met his glance, and James replied, "He didn't have any polyjuice in his system, or any glamours on him. Even Ollivander thinks he's Harry."

"Ah, but," Frank leaned forward, his pet theory itching at his throat in anticipation, "we didn't check his mind for stragglers. I mean, Harry was lost in an attack by _dementors_; he shouldn't be nearly as well adjusted as he is."

"Come on, Frank," James laughed, but he looked uneasy, "that's… Obviously there were Death Eaters or someone human involved; _dementors _didn't stick him with the Dursleys under a ward. They must've gotten him out before they could really affect him." He paused, and added, "And there can't be a lot of horrible memories a one year old would really have, anyway."

"But what are the chances of that? Harry escaping dementors unscathed due to a convenient kidnapping? Couldn't he be under some sort of control? He may have been raised by the enemy-" Whoever that enemy was, was unclear, but Frank had been sitting on this growing conspiracy theory for some time.

"Frank," James frowned at his friend's increasingly excited tone, "You're out of line."

Wanting to argue his point further, Frank forced himself to calm his expression, instead. "You're right. Sorry." He wouldn't get anywhere pushing the point now. There was time. Harry would be going to Hogwarts, soon, and be contained under Dumbledore's watchful eye. "I guess I've been training with Mad Eye Moody too often again. _Something _about it just gets me paranoid." James laughed, and Frank smiled, but he knew he'd started James thinking_. He doesn't see it now, _Frank thought, _but he'll realize there's something wrong with that boy._


	6. Chapter 6

**Shorter chapter than usual, pals.**

**Disclaimer: I own not of the Harry Potter stories or associated movies/merchandise/world, and I make no money off of this.**

**Last Time:**

_He doesn't see it now, _Frank thought, _but he'll realize there's something wrong with that boy._

Harry was cautiously pleased. After the atrocious example of a family outing, his veins had begun itching again. When he'd caught himself eyeing up Ollivander's wand-carving instruments a little too thoughtfully, he'd begged Ollivander into a trip to see his _muggle friend Garrett, _and when Garrett bewilderedly opened the door, his age didn't seem to phase Ollivander as Harry had hoped it wouldn't.

"Have a nice playdate," the wandmaker called at an almost normal volume, walking away from the house.

"See you tomorrow, Olly!" Harry waved until he Apparated away, leaving Garrett to move his querying expression from the strange man to his enigmatic friend.

Harry ducked past the taller man into his house and made a beeline for the kitchen, Garrett loping along behind him with a confused, "Who was that?"

"_That_ was my other best friend and pseudo-Master, Garrick Ollivander," Harry muttered, opening and shutting different cabinets before reaching the last and twirling to face Garrett, "_Where _do you keep your bleach and-or rat poison?"

"Laundry closet," Garrett answered unthinkingly, before the knowledge of what Harry would do with it knocked rudely on the side of his skull, "Wait, no, I don't have any."

"Too late," Harry called back gleefully, having dashed past the man to his goal, objective nearly in hand. Garrett stumbled, but caught up, grabbing the bleach away from Harry's little fingers.

"No," he said firmly, "Not happening."

"Will detergent kill me?" Harry asked with a pitiful expression.

"It's all non-toxic," Garrett declared snootily, "After I found out about your hobby, I suicide-proofed most of my house."

"S'not a hobby," Harry sulked, "I could go try drowning myself in the tub." Though it hadn't worked before. Stupid, undisciplined magic clearing his lungs and pushing him out.

"I won't let you into the bathroom unsupervised," Garrett returned, "I don't care if you _do _come back; when you're in _my _house- why are you in my house, by the way?" He appeared quite derailed by this train of thought and fixed a stare on the little eldritch horror that insisted on invading his life.

"Can't a man visit his best friend ever for no reason at all?"

Garrett shook his head, "Not when the first thing out of your mouth is to inquire after the location of my bleach." It was almost touching that Garrett didn't fight the implication that they were best friends...or he could just be ignoring it.

"Guess I'll be going, then," the littler one pouted dramatically, "I… I can tell when I'm not wanted..." He could always use his go-to: find a high place and jump. A hand caught his collar.

"You are _not _going to go throw yourself in front of a vehicle again or choke down some toxic chemicals; you _are _going to stay _here _until you tell me what prompted this latest fit of suicidal actions," Garrett decided, and Harry hadn't known that Garrett cared quite that much about the creepy demi-immortal he'd been practically forced to get to know. Granted, Harry _may _have maybe traumatized him a weensy bit by hanging himself in front of him. The whole car thing, too… Yeah… That sounded more plausible. Away with his own thoughts, Harry didn't realize what was about to happen until Garrett scooped him up and marched to his office, ignoring Harry's belated struggle. He sat down in an uncomfortable-looking wooden office chair, settling Harry on his lap and scooting the chair in closer to the desk to trap Harry between Garrett, the desk, and the arms of afore-mentioned chair. When Harry didn't seem able or willing to speak any time soon, he calmly began working on bookkeeping for some Fire and Fang Assemblage steel company, and Harry snapped out of his dismay.

"You… You _picked me up_ _and put me on your lap,_" Harry twisted, trying to see Garrett's face, "Do you know how undignified this is?"

A snort, "Says the man who _skips _any time he isn't paying attention." Harry gave him that one, but it didn't make up for this. He would not be treated like a child by someone who _knew _what he was. By the _only_ person who knew what he was.

"You know, you're just adding fuel to the fire for any child molesting claims I could make against you," he noted heatedly, but Garrett only sighed.

"I couldn't stop you if you _really _wanted to destroy my life, at this point," he replied quietly, pausing to note down an inconsistency and the number of the check involved, "But I don't think you really want to." Squirming uncomfortably at the calling of his bluff, Harry wondered if he'd be willing to Confound or hex his way out of this. On the heels of that question was whether he even _could_, with his undisciplined, tiny magic core.

"Why are you doing this?"

"The real question is," Garrett corrected with a frown, "Why isn't anyone _else _doing this?"

"I don't savvy," Harry replied blankly, leaning back to see Garrett's frown deepen.

"I was afraid you wouldn't," the accountant pushed away his notes, turning Harry on his lap so they could partially face one another, "If what I've been supposing is correct, there is no one in _this _world that loves you."

"I found the other Potters," Harry interjected, "They love their son."

"They don't know you," Garrett said quietly, "And you aren't their son." The old soul in front of him drooped like a marionette with its strings cut, and Garrett hastened to continue, "Not that I'm saying no one could love you, or that no one loves you in the life you had before this, but I'm betting I'm the person here that knows you best, and," he laughed self-deprecatingly, "I'm a pretty pathetic substitute for whatever family and friends you had before. But, it seems to me, I'm all you've got." They eyed each other, then, with equal amounts of misgiving and a bit of dismay. "I don't think you came here to kill yourself." Harry wanted to open his mouth and assert that that _was, _in fact, the entire reason he was here, but Garrett steamrolled over him, "I think you knew I would stop you. The fact that you are seemingly staying with some Mr. Hollywander instead of these other Potters you've found tells me you've been searching for ways around the authority they wield to off yourself. Since this Hollywander didn't bat an eye at leaving you with a grown man for a night, you likely could have found some way to do it without involving me." Though Harry was torn between laughing at _Hollywander_ and crying at the misconception, he couldn't help but wonder if he might have missed something obvious in his agitation? His mouth finally shut in the hopes Garrett would elucidate in that general direction. "Instead, you show up here and make your intentions blatantly clear. Don't you think that's a little odd?" Ah, well. Harry lived to be disappointed, it seemed. The entire line of logic made him want to shriek with frustration, but he bit his tongue, stubbornly keeping his silence on the matter, and Garrett returned to his work with a disappointed little sigh.

"I would challenge this Mr. Hollywander of yours for custody," he muttered, his instinctual hunching over his work crowding Harry ever closer to the desk, "but he's likely caught up in your curse-folk-tale nonsense, so I'll have to hope that there's a reason you couldn't do yourself in while in a household with people like you." Sounded suspiciously like wards, to Harry's thinking. He shook his head and glared at the little S-shaped logo of the company Garrett was working with. Garrett wouldn't know anything about that, but it was still vaguely irritating to have him accidentally bring up Harry's biggest obstacle.

"I just want to be with my real family," Harry complained, "Is that so difficult to understand? You know I'm not really a child; I was _done _with life. In fact," a finger pointed upward, "I was 172 years old at the time." This plea for reason was ignored, and Harry added, "Now I'm 173…"

"That doesn't mean- ugh," Garrett seemed to immediately regret having risen to the bait, and he gave a low, frustrated groan, "Can't you just wait to die naturally?"

"For reasons I'd rather not get into," _dementors, _"I may not have that option."

"So, you might be completely _immortal_?"

"It's starting to look like it," Harry grouched, "So let me down and I'll just be on my merry, unending way." Garrett was a little busy processing, though, and Harry sighed, looking over the spreadsheets on the desk, noting that he actually recognized a few popular companies' logos, "Should I be seeing these?"

"Oh, who would you tell?" Garrett dismissed on automatic, before shaking his head as if to clear it, "Wait a tick. Death is a terrifying, painful thing, and you are _immortal_, and you keep trying to drink my bleach- why, again?"

"Death," Harry corrected haughtily, "is but the next great adventure."

"Aren't you already sort of on your next great adventure?" Garrett argued indignantly.

Harry stared at him, mouth gaping open, "Merlin's floppy nutsack." He hadn't thought of it that way before.

Garrett stared back, "That's disgusting."

On the one hand, Harry could almost hear Dumbledore laughing hysterically in the afterlife. On the other hand, what if this _was _his afterlife? The voice he'd heard in his so-close-so-far near-death experiences wasn't necessarily trustworthy, after all. Why had he just taken their words at face value? What kind of afterlife 'wouldn't be ready' for some random mortal that died of old age? But why would they lie?

Had the voice even existed?

Seeing Harry had retreated into his own thoughts, Garrett had kindly placed him into a chair of his own, and closed the door to his study. Even if the danger hadn't quite passed, Harry shouldn't be able to sneak out of the room. That door creaked like a murder of crows. _Unless he has some magical way of getting around, _Garrett admitted to himself, _then it's all rubbish, anyway._

He was still horrified when Harry stuck a metal pen in the outlet.

Harry sat back up and threw it at his face when he began to cry.

Eventually the cretin gave in, and hoisted himself up on the desk to pat Garrett's hair and wipe away tears as the crying slowly trickled to a stop.

"You're the worst," Garrett sniffled, "You can't just kill yourself in front of me and then comfort me about it." Harry shrugged and handed Garrett a tissue to clean himself up; despite the failure, he felt better, and he didn't want to ruin his mood with an argument. "Again," Garrett added.

"At least I'm not threatening you with molestation charges this time," Harry patted his cheek, "Buck up."

"Still, I wonder what my neighbors think of me," Garrett blew his nose, "What with a creepy little boy coming and going from my house at all hours."

"I don't think they've noticed," Harry soothed in a confiding tone, "They don't seem like the brightest and the best, if you catch my meaning."

"Hey, Valerie is smart," Garrett defended, still holding the tissue to his nose,

"Valerie?" Harry waggled his eyebrows, "Is that the pretty brunette next door?"

"We are not having this conversation."

Despite Garrett's opinion on the matter, they _did _have that conversation, and Garrett came out of it feeling like that awkward thirteen year old he'd been when he first met Magnhild Sanders and asked his dad for advice, receiving, instead, the Talk. Thankfully, Harry had been convinced not to replicate that particular part of the conversation, but some of his suggestions were just on the edge of amoral.

"...And if that doesn't work, steal her cat and say you found it wandering in the street for an in. On the other hand, you could always try to arrange its death so you could go and offer sympathy in her time of need, though," Harry concluded, heels kicking the legs of the chair he'd relocated to the other side of the desk. That way, any time Garrett glanced up from the paperwork he was waving his hands at to dry the tear marks, he was forced to make eye contact.

"That's horrible," Garrett reluctantly matched gazes with the abomination sitting across from him, resigning himself to letting the tear stains linger, "Were you cursed for a good reason?"

"What constitutes a good reason?" Harry asked, curiously.

"Like…" Searching for a polite way to ask 'Were you once a supervillain?' had not been on Garrett's list of activities to prepare for that morning. "Did you… Maybe… Have a bad reputation? Say… An infamous one?"

When Harry began to laugh, almost hysterically, the poor businessman tried hastily to backpedal, but Harry waved him off, "No, I…" A burst of giggles later, Harry pulled himself together, "No, I was something of a _heroic _figure, actually. I offed the current- er, head terrorist, I suppose, and lived life as a fine, upstanding citizen."

"What happened?" It was out of Garrett's mouth before he could think about it, and Harry sobered, understanding what Garrett was getting at. His personality didn't seem like that of a hero's, anymore.

"This body was brain damaged before my soul got shoved in it, and there was only a bit of soul left," Harry leaned back dangerously in his chair, the front legs lifting off the ground, "That extra bit of soul and my own magic keeps me functioning, I think, but the damage is likely to the frontal lobe-" He sneaked a glance at Garrett's uncomprehending expression and amended, "to the decision making areas, since the… creature that caused the soul draining tends to have that sort of effect." It wasn't just the traumatic experience that had Azkaban inmates go mental. A pause, and Harry's nose crinkled as he added, "And for some reason, my morality has decided that it is subject to decay, a lifetime late."

Garrett rubbed his temples and prepared to summarize it all back at Harry to see if he had any of it straight. Extra soul, brain damage, and decaying morals sounded about as absurd as everything else so far, so, why not?

Harry managed to gag himself with a spoon and smother himself with a pillow before Ollivander came back the next morning to pick him up, but on the bright side, Garrett barely even cried those times.

"You've put me entirely off my food for at least the rest of the week," Garrett informed him as he shooed the little hellion out the door.

"I love you, too," Harry replied cheekily, and Garrett flicked the back of his head before he was out of range. "Ow. Just for that, I'm not telling you the next time I drop in."

"You didn't warn me this time, either."

"Ah, but next time," Harry threatened cheerily, "You won't even know I'm _there _unless you trip over my corpse." Garrett shut the door, effectively ending the conversation, and Harry turned his attention to his other source of entertainment, taking the hand Ollivander extended him and bracing himself for side-along apparition.

In the last weeks of summer, a routine fell into place for Ollivander, Potters, and Garrett, as well. Harry found himself spending most of the week with Ollivander, as the Potters' visits dwindled to weekend lunches, and bothering Garrett on Wednesdays, his lightest work day, wherever the poor man tried to hide. He'd gotten quite a shock when Harry had crawled out from beneath the table at the little-known family restaurant he'd holed up in one Wednesday and appropriated the salaryman's menu, beginning a running commentary on the prices that would get them thrown out when the waiter came back around.

"The magic of living through three children's attempts to hide their romantic relationships," Harry had matter-of-factly laid out with a grin when Garrett asked how he'd gotten under there in the first place.

Despite Garrett's occasional explosive waterworks, Ollivander's less-than-comforting habits, and the Potters' awkward, near-silent luncheons, Harry had a fairly peaceful time of it. Rather than counting down the days until September first, as he remembered doing both as a child and a father, he was taken by surprise when the day was nearly upon him.

"Better pack for Hogwarts tonight," Olly commented off-handedly over a dinner of some unidentifiable being not fit to be a new source of wand cores.

For a moment, Harry stared at him uncomprehendingly, but as realization dawned, he put his fork down, "It's August thirty-first?"

Ollivander hummed in confirmation, poking at the striped section of his meal until it shifted back to a dull grey.

"That went by quickly," Harry ignored how his own meal was slowly cycling through patterns fit for an old fashioned bathroom wallpaper, and pushed the plate away, "I can't believe I lost track of time so easily." He'd not even made a suicide attempt since… Well, last week, but he had a noble-ish reason for that, yeah? Reuniting the family and all that...

"Well, as you get older, even the centuries begin to fly by," Olly chewed a bite thoughtfully, "I suppose at your age it's all much slower. But the more time you have behind you, the smaller of a fraction of your life each bit before you gets. It takes much more time passing by to phase me. This past month isn't even a ten-thousandth of the time I've spent on Earth."

Harry did some quick math in his head, "You're over eight hundred years old?"

"Of course," Ollivander seemed almost affronted, "Haven't you seen the sign outside my shop? The date founded is right there, child."**(1)**

"And in all that time, you've never, er…" _Have some tact, _Common Sense reminded him, "...Haven't you ever wanted to die?" _You are the best listener, _Common Sense huffed, _You horrid little wretch._

"For a few years," Ollivander replied blithely, apparently unconcerned with Harry's faux pas, "About a century ago. I'd fallen in love, you see, and she didn't leave me when she discovered how I was. Arlena. I tried ending it all when she passed, but I suppose I'm just not meant to die." _Now_, Harry remembered Ollivander's reference to once having a death wish of his own, and wished he hadn't asked. Olly's reasoning was uncomfortably close to his own.

"Sorry to bring it up."

"No," Ollivander waved off his apology, "They just weren't ready for me."

Harry nodded, ready to change the subject, when the wording hit him, "What did you just say?"

"Hm?" A blink of bulbous, silvery eyes, "Just something I heard once."

"When you tried to kill yourself?" Harry pressed, and Ollivander's gaze sharpened.

The atmosphere felt instantly oppressive, "What do you know about it?"  
"That you're not the only one the Powers that be aren't ready for," Harry stated emphatically, "And you're not the only one being kept from your family."

"This… changes things," Ollivander steepled his fingers, eyes locked on Harry, "Your past life, I'm assuming?" The younger of the two nodded, and Olly hummed again, contemplatively, "And should I also assume your death wish is not quite… idle?"

"Let's just say, when I get into Hogwarts' library, the Patronus charm and a certain wizarding prison will be top of my to-research list," he spread his palms, face up, "Do you know anything more about the Powers? Anything about them other than their supposed inability to fit us into the afterlife?"

Ollivander eyed him, and the silence stretched uncomfortably taut. At last, Olly opened his mouth to speak.

xo0O0ox

Lily didn't know what to do anymore. Everyday she didn't see her son was leaving a scratch in her heart, but seeing him… It hurt more. He'd look at her, and the most positive, true emotion she'd seen in his gaze was mild curiosity. Most visits, he seemed averse to- even repulsed by- her presence. James', too. When he thought he was unobserved, he'd sent the strangest glances at her little Fennel. Something ugly, mixed with a strange twist to his lips that spoke of amusement. Lily didn't want to think badly of her son, but... this wasn't a boy she had raised.

It was a stranger. She'd wanted to get to know him, to make him her son again, and he'd slipped away.

What was worse, Lily was relieved he had. When he had been in her home, the wards had itched at her with his intent to harm, spiking when Fennel and he were left alone together. So far as she knew, Fennel hadn't even noticed her elder brother's strange animosity; he hadn't acted on it within the wards, but it was still there. She couldn't bring it up to James, at the time, thinking she might be going mad. He was eleven years old, for the Gods' sakes. What sort of eleven year old would set a line of ill will wards singing like that?

The silence when he was gone again had been confirmation enough, but James had brushed it off as some sort of malfunction. Even now, he came home with stories of how Frank was going crazy under Mad Eye's tutelage, suspecting Harry of anything nefarious. She'd asked him what Frank had said, and his theories struck a chord in her. Wouldn't be almost a relief to know that this wasn't her son? Or not truly, anyway. If he _had _been brainwashed- oh, it would be terrible- but there was a lightness to the thought, that no son of hers could turn out this dark without outside interference. An easing of the burden. if he was brainwashed, he could be saved. Now, if only she could bring herself to see him off to Hogwarts.

xo0O0ox

"Helping you to die; it would be wrong to do it," Ollivander said, carefully and slowly, and for a long moment, too long, Harry wanted to throw his cutlery across the room at the elderly man. "Yet, I doubt I can stop you, either."

"Well, thanks for _that_ conversation," Harry stood from the table, intending to storm away to who knows where, but Ollivander stood as well, and Harry paused reluctantly.

"So, I may as well tell you what little I know."

* * *

**(1) Ignore whatever canon tells you is the founding date and tell yourself it's something that works with my timeline. :)**


	7. Chapter 7

**Remember suicide is not the answer. Harry is bat shit crazy through no fault of his own. He is delusional and cannot quite reason correctly, even if a broken clock is right two times a day... Ollivander is not all the way on his rocker, either. Since most of this story is coming from inside Harry's head, you'll see his reasoning more than anyone else's, but he is not a reliable narrator and he is not always right.**

**Short chapter.**

**Disclaimer**: **I neither own nor profit off of Harry Potter and assoc. merchandise.**

Head spinning from the knowledge Ollivander had imparted, Harry was eternally grateful- _Nope. Not really._ Harry frowned at how little Ollivander knew about the mysterious Powers that had stranded them here. He had thanked him for sharing in the moment, but up here, packing what was left out into his trunk, he could admit he was disappointed. Ollivander had sort of eavesdropped on the other side once, after his own failed attempt to follow his loved ones, using the equivalent of a pimped out _ouija_ board, and learned that most people received a very different welcome to death.

The particular death he'd eavesdropped on had been that of a Death Eater, Evan Rosier, who was alive and kicking in Harry's home timeline. As far as Ollivander could tell, the board had shown both Rosier and the voice's sides of the conversation, and he'd given Harry his edited version of the transcript.

Hands fisting in the shirt he'd been putting away, Harry tried and failed to banish the unhelpful conversation from his mind.

_ROSIER: Who are you? Where am I?_

_?: You're dead, Mr. Rosier._

_ROSIER: Pull the other one._

_?: No worries, though. Your spot has been prepared._

_ROSIER: What are you talking about?_

_?: We almost didn't have time to make your spot- you weren't supposed to die just yet. You must have run into one of our displaced._

_ROSIER: I'm not dead! I'm right here! Who the hell do you think you are? Who-_

_?: Keep your arms and legs close to your body._

_ROSIER: What? I- [unintelligible mass of letters]._

It was worse than useless; it was cryptic. Harry had had quite enough of cryptic.

...Unless _he_ was being cryptic; that was fun. _Idiot,_ Common Sense snarked quietly as Harry resumed packing. At least Ollivander had given him a lead in his dementor hunt. Violence didn't touch dementors, and actual attacks of physical or magical nature tended to just phase through them. Only neutral objects like walls, doors, boulders, seemed physical to them, as they could be caged and needed to go through openings rather than just seep into a building. On the other side of things, the positive emotions of the patronus charm didn't just scare off dementors, it almost seemed to choke them. Not enough to kill them, apparently, but enough to freak them out. It was possible, Ollivander hypothesized, that there was a third stage to the patronus charm, past the mist and the manifestation, that the dementors feared. Rather than stick around for the final version, they seemed to flee when the second manifested, in a show of common sense many endowed with magical abilities didn't have.

_I wish I could hop into one of _their_ heads_, Common Sense grumbled, and Harry almost flicked himself in the temple before realizing that was crazy. And he wasn't crazy.

Nope. Just skewed.

Regardless, the key to destroying dementors may have been in the intent. As in, actually destroying a dementor may have required the caster to have absolutely no intention to do so, or perhaps extremely positive emotions towards them. Perhaps someone under copious cheering charms or with their will suppressed, like a less intrusive Imperius, could manage it. The complexities of killing a dementor accidentally-on-purpose made Harry's head hurt. It was all conjecture, though, so the dementor serving as a makeshift horcrux was safe for now. _Especially since we can't even find it, yet,_ Common Sense added.

Maybe Harry would get himself thrown in Azkaban at some point. ...Though, he would then be wandless. That might not be the best idea. _You can nursery rhyme it to death._ He couldn't stop himself from flicking the side of his head at the snarky comment this time, and stared at the offending appendage indignantly.

"I am not crazy," Harry closed his trunk with slightly more force than necessary, "I am a sane man with a broken vessel." In the silence of his room, he scratched his head and added reluctantly, "Who is talking aloud to himself as he plots his eventual suicide."

Firmly, Harry pushed that line of thought aside. If its library didn't have the answers he needed, then Hogwarts owed him, at least, a good distraction. He'd saved its alternate existence, after all.

-x-

"There they are," Olly pointed, and amidst the milling parents and students, the elder Potters stood uncertainly in place, searching for Ollivander and Harry.

"They showed up." Harry's voice was a mixture of surprise and resignation that had Ollivander shooting him a vaguely disapproving glance. Harry shot him one right back, "Aren't you going crazy, wanting to sneak up on everyone here?"

The silver-haired man looked upward tensely, "I'm trying not to think about it."

After a moment, during which the Potters noticed them and began making their way over, Harry patted Ollivander's arm (it was all he could reach), "Go."

Olly looked between Harry and the entrance, hesitated, and nodded in gratitude, beating a hasty retreat and fleeing the crowds that set off his ingrained compulsions like popcorn.

"Where's Mr. Ollivander going?" James asked, breaking through the others to Harry's bubble of calm.

"We saw you coming and I told him to go back; he doesn't like crowds very much," Harry explained, walking towards the train in the hopes of keeping the farewell short. Did that sound like a kid's explanation? It was blunt enough.

"Oh," Lily looked after Ollivander's retreating back as it finally vanished through the barrier, "We could've come to pick you up if he'd told us. We dropped Fennel at the Lovegood's beforehand, anyway; it wouldn't have been a hassle."

"Didn't think of that, I guess," Harry shrugged as the Potters fell in step with him, a silence settling gingerly about the three of them.

Another few steps and James asked, "Are you excited for Hogwarts?"

"Yeah." _Count the steps or something; don't think about the imposter-Potters...im-Potters... Oh, right, it's gone quiet again_, Harry's feet, at least, kept going without conscious prompting. What else could he say? "How do you get Sorted into your House?"

A bit of life came back to James' eyes, "Oh ho, that is a well-guarded secret, Harry. I would advise you to be extra prepared, though. The process is fairly grueling." A grin made its way across James' face, and Harry expected Lily to laugh or tell him off any second now, but instead, she looked serious.

"It _is_ best to stay calm; with the affiliation test added in, I've heard some of the first years have fainted from the shock."

Well, that was new. "Affiliation test? What's that?"

"Your mother implemented it," James replied cheerily, as they came to a stop near the luggage cars.

"Oh, well," Lily placed a hand on her cheek as if she were embarrassed, "I came up with most of the charm-work, but the legalities were thanks to Frank and Alice, really."

"It tests you for baddies in your head and loyalty to the late Dark Wanker," James whispered spookily, wiggling his fingers for effect.

"Language," his wife admonished, turning to Harry and almost reluctantly tucking an escaped strand of hair behind his ear, "It makes sure there aren't any foreign influences controlling anyone, or… any people left with the brand of the You Know Who. Every student and staff member goes through it at Sorting and after every subsequent- er, following- break."

"What sort of foreign influences?" Harry asked, and gained a strange look from Lily in response as she drew her hand back, "What?"

She shook it off, though she stood a little straighter, as if she were keeping her distance, "Just things you don't need to worry about at your age, Harry. Why so interested?"

"Something to talk about," Harry shrugged, wondering if Snape was given a free pass or something. Dumbledore seemed to be alive, after all. Though, hadn't the Dark Mark faded into almost nothingness after Harry killed Voldemort the last time? The magic had drained from it, he recalled. Still, these were evidently questions he would not be able to ask Lily without freaking her out, from her reaction to the casual probes he'd employed so far. "You made it; I'll be going through it; felt like common ground."

Lily nodded uneasily, but changed the topic, "Do you have a House you want to get into?" A pause, and she hastened to add, "They're all good, though."

"Might have to mourn you if you end up in Slytherin," James put in thoughtfully, lifting Harry's trunk onto the train from the trolley, "But you should survive any of the other three well enough."

"I don't really know," Harry admitted, flexing his fingers uncomfortably, "I can't see myself in Ravenclaw, though."

James laughed and ruffled his hair, "Probably not Hufflepuff, either. They're a little… soft."

Lily snorted, "I'd believe that if you could say it to Alice's face without cringing."

"You're scared of her, too," James defended, before turning his attention back to Harry, "Looks like you might end up in Gryffindor or Slytherin. Gryffindor is a million times better, but we won't disown you for Slytherin."

"Just mourn me," Harry pointed out, recalling James' previous claim.

"It's cutthroat in Slytherin," James asserted with a grin, ignoring Lily's sigh.

"So, basically, what you're telling me is..." Harry summarized, "Gryffindor."

"Family tradition," James patted his shoulder, "For generations, Potter males have gone into Gryffindor. Even a few who really shouldn't have..." He looked lost in thought for a moment, but concluded, "Remind me to tell you about Morfic Potter someday."

"Alright," Harry agreed, and glanced at the train, "I should really go find a compartment for now, though."

"Towards the back of the train is furthest from the prefects' meeting area," James informed him over Lily's silent disapproval, "The lazy ones don't always patrol that far."

"Thanks, D-," Harry choked on the word, horrified at his own blunder, and hastily continued, "Good bye, I'll see you for Christmas." He scurried onto the train without waiting for their farewells but heard James wonder aloud,

"What was Christmas, again?"

_His jokes are not that great for a former Marauder,_ Harry shook his head, searching for an empty or an interesting compartment. He passed many a familiar face, but he wasn't looking for those. When he spotted a compartment emitting smoke and the occasional colorful spark, he thought he'd reached his goal, but just then he heard a sound every father and grandfather learns to fear. A sniffle.

_It could just be a student who's caught a cold_, he rationalized, edging slightly towards the door beside him from which the sound had come. _Or they're allergic to diesel._ Peering through the little window, he saw a young girl with bright, curly hair, hunched over her knees, and felt a little bit of him crumple up and shrivel into dust.

Crying little girls.

From there, it was a matter of habit. Harry entered the compartment with the air of a man walking to the gallows- well, any man but Harry- and the door shutting behind him made the girl's head snap up. She was a second year Slytherin, from the crest on her robes and her clear youth. Attempting a sneer through the obvious tear tracks on her face, she put up a brave front.

"What are you doing here, firstie?"

"It's adorable that you think that's insulting," Harry said without thinking, sitting beside her and putting a hand on her back, "But I'm guessing you've not really got your heart in it." The girl first stared at him as if he'd grown a series of toes across his cheekbones, but as he sat quietly beside her, one hand gently running back and forth across her shoulders, the facade crumpled and the waterworks resumed. Harry shushed and soothed and there-there'd until she'd used up her supply of salt water and wiped in embarrassment at her wet cheeks.

"You didn't see anything," she warned him, wiping her nose with her tie.

"Well, I wouldn't say I didn't see _anything_," Harry brought his hand back into his own personal bubble, "Otherwise, I wouldn't have met you at all." There was a pause as she digested this bit of nonsense, and Harry added, "Want to tell me what that was all about?"

She looked at him from the corner of her eye and some of the tension faded as she noted he was keeping his gaze politely on the empty seats across from them, rather than gawping at her puffy eyes and reddened nose. Just as Common Sense had (demanded) suggested. A sniff, and she wrapped her arms around herself, "It's silly. I was so excited to go to Hogwarts last year, but now I can't stop thinking I won't see my mum for months and months, and how homesick I ended up before. I still want to go, but I…" Her strained voice seemed to cut off as her throat tightened, and Harry's eyes widened at the possibility of the crying resuming, quickly action.

"It's natural to be homesick, but you can always visit on the holidays, and I'm sure you have friends here you miss while you're at home, yeah?"

"Yes," she admitted, sounding a little further from another breakdown.

"Well, when you're sad or homesick, you can talk to your friends about it," he suggested quietly, "I'm sure they've felt the same at times, and it might bring you closer." She nodded, and Harry felt she'd left the danger zone, with a pat to her shoulder, he stood, "Alright, I'm glad we had this talk." Making a beeline for the door, he paused only for her exclamation of,

"Wait!" Her arm was outstretched when he turned and she brought it hastily back to her lap, "My name's Margery Ludsthorp. I hope you're in Slytherin."

Harry smiled, "Thank you. Nice to meet you," and escaped. The smoke in the compartment down the way had dissipated, and Harry sighed at the missed opportunity. Might as well wander until something interesting popped up again. Or go crush his head in the door of the luggage car. Or step between dueling students and see what the combined spells would do to him. Maybe choke on a struggling chocolate frog. Spirits brightened, Harry wandered off with his hands in his pockets, feeling the train begin to move under his feet as they left the station.

"Excuse me," someone tapped his shoulder, and Harry froze at the familiar voice. _How in the world did I already bump into- well, it might _not_ be her-_ "Have you seen a toad?"

And that was how Harry found himself wandering from compartment to compartment, popping his head in and asking if anyone had noticed a lumpy amphibian hopping about their feet. He couldn't very well _accio_ it with his first year magic reserves, though if he found it a good_ wingardium leviosa_ would not be remiss. Being suddenly lifted into the air and carted about is something that tends to subdue spirited little pets such as Trevor. Harry had done it at least once to most of his children's pets at one time or another. At first, he'd worried what it said about his children's treatment of them that they inevitably attempted escape, but eventually he'd learned that they all had more common sense than the teachers that sent back glowing reviews of his younglings. Each and every one of them had a streak of the hellion that definitely did not come from him.

Probably.

Whether the same was true of this Neville, Harry didn't know. Rather than being dragged about by Hermione on their quest, it seemed they'd split up to cover more ground, and Harry had been sent off towards the front of the train alone.

So far, he'd seen the Weasley twins, Oliver Wood, Marcus Flint and friends, Percy Weasley, Nymphadora Tonks, practically every Hufflepuff, and the soon-to-be Slytherin first years. Whom he was still staring at now. Before he'd entered, Draco had clearly been fighting a scowl, but now they were all neutrally returning his stare.

"You're so tiny," he told them frankly, standing in the doorway of their compartment and interrupting the game of Gobstones within, "I can't believe you all fit in one compartment, too."

"_You're_ one to talk," Pansy shot back, "You look the height of a goblin's lovechild."

"I'm taller than Professor Flitwick, Parkinson," Harry pointed out, uncaring that he shouldn't know either piece of information.

"How do you know my name?"

"Maybe he's heard of the Parkinson nose," Daphne Greengrass snickered quietly, and Pansy flushed, hand coming up to cover her pug-like nose as Tracey Davis and Blaise Zabini giggled. That was surprisingly catty for a bunch of first years. Uncalled for, too.

"_Rude_," Harry admonished, and the snickering stopped.

"Sorry," the offenders chorused without thinking, turning to stare at each other in astonishment at hearing the apology coming from one another's mouths.

Hmm, his Paternal Aura of Authority must still be firmly in place. A grin blossomed in Harry's mind as Common Sense stepped aside with a sigh and a mocking bow. "Draco, I'm surprised you keep such uncouth company," he raised his eyebrows, "And they don't even draw the line at their own? Loyalty is in such short supply in youth these days."

"Er…" Draco replied eloquently, put on the spot, as it were, and unable to figure Harry's angle, "I guess?"

"Come," Harry extended a hand, "We mustn't let your line be tarnished by such disrespect in your presence." Confused, concerned, and some other words starting with c, Draco let Harry pull him to his feet and out of the compartment without a comeback. Turns out the Malfoy line was Draco's soft spot in any dimension. Throw enough respectful sounding syllables at it and he'd be too confused to argue. Harry pulled him along the hallway to the next compartment, where he released Draco, knocked on the door, and asked if they'd seen a toad. They made it past four more compartment before Draco regained control of himself.

"What is going on?" he demanded, "I remember you. You're Ollivander's shopboy, but- _why _did you do this?"

"Felt like it," Harry grinned, and knocked on the next door, "You can't tell me you were _enjoying _yourself with that group, from the ugly face you were making when I came in. _Now_ you're helping me look for a toad."

"A toad?" Draco crossed his arms over his chest, "Who would go looking for a toad they'd finally _lost_?"

"Neville Longbottom, I believe," Harry hummed, and leaned into the now-open compartment, "Seen a toad? No? Figured." Moving down to the next door, Harry continued, "I have a feeling it's going to be found when it _wants_ to be."

"_Neville Longbottom_?" Draco squeaked, and then glanced up and down the hallway as if someone might have heard him, voice lowering, "You're telling me Neville Longbottom, _the_ Boy-Who-Vanquished, owns a _toad_?"

Well, that's different. What exactly had happened between Neville and Voldemort to change the title so? Maybe a trip to the Room of Requirement was in order to check on a certain diadem… No- he wasn't getting involved in this. He'd have his fun. He'd kill a dementor. Then, Harry was out of here. Voldemort and Neville would have to hug it out, for all he cared.

"Yes, a toad," Harry confirmed, "And its name is Trevor, though a more accurate title might be Terror if the thing _frequently _hides this well." The next door opened, "Have you seen a toad? Yes? Oh, no it doesn't have a ribbon on it. ...Well, it didn't when it was last seen. What color was it? No, the _toad_. Ah, that's not it." He shut the door with a little more effort than needed. "I'm getting bored, Draco. And that is not a good sign for this world."

The kid was Ollivander's employee. For this alone, Draco believed him. "We don't _have_ to find the toad." A thought occurred, and Draco muttered, "_I_ didn't have to find the toad, _anyway_." His voice returned to normal registers, "Why don't you… er… do something fun?"

The fact that Harry's thoughts turned right back to decapitating himself with a window didn't make Common Sense very pleased with him. _I can see it as a twisted duty_, it scolded, _but stop treating it as a hobby! Or at least develop a better one!_ What could he possibly do with a Malfoy in his thrall? He ignored the wary glances and clear sense that Draco thought him insane which might have belied that theory. When a slow smile spread across his face, Draco wondered, far too late, if he might have made a mistake following the crazy wandshop employee. "Let's go do _diplomacy_."


	8. Chapter 8

**Disclaimer: I do not own or profit from Harry Potter and associated merchandise, which belongs to Rowling and friends.**

**Remember, Harry isn't reliable and isn't sane. However, if there's a gaping plot hole, you can still point it out to me so I can make it into a plot point haha However, the plot finally is picking up pace, so I better hope there aren't too many!**

"Ron, meet Draco; Draco meet Ron."

A bewildered expression began forming on the poor boys' faces as Harry pushed them into sitting next to each other and took his own seat across from the two, leaning forward expectantly, just waiting for the fireworks to begin.

"Draco means dragon, right?" Ron asked, bravely breaking the silence under Harry's gleeful gaze. The Malfoy child could only nod mutely. "That's… That's cool. My uncles are… Well, my elder brother works at a dragon reserve," Ron continued, adjusting a pewter dragon pin on the collar of his robe in a nervous fidget.

"Maybe I said this wrong," Harry interjected, "Ron _Weasley_, meet Draco _Malfoy. _Malfoy, meet Weasley."

"How do you know my name, anyway?" Ron replied, "It's creepy enough that you barge into the compartment without introducing yourself, but that's a little much."

"He works for Ollivander," Draco muttered out of the side of his mouth, nonchalantly avoiding Harry's eyes.

Processing what this meant took a little bit of doing on Ron's part and Harry again marveled at the dichotomy of Ron's oblivious nature in any social situation and his keen awareness on a chessboard.

"Oh," he said, finally, "That does explain things."

Purebloods; they figure their own explanations.

"Sure, Olly's been training my omniscience all summer," Harry waved off impatiently, "But the point _is_, your families have been feuding for time immemorial and I'm waiting for some _sparks._"

"I don't exactly spend my time reading the family histories," Draco huffed, and Harry stared at him in horror.

"You _don't_?" Mentally ill or no, Lucius had some explaining to do for… Not... Raising his child to be stuck up bigot…. Huh, maybe that was fine. Yet, shouldn't these two still be at each other's throats? Though, part of the hate between the Malfoys and the Weasleys _had _been their father's interactions in the Ministry... Harry eyed the two of them in the ensuing silence, "Well, this was a waste of time."

"Are you _upset _we don't hate each other?" Ron put forward with what was, for him, astonishing social awareness.

"It's just boring," Harry waved off with a sigh, wondering if Fluffy would tear him apart or eat him. He wasn't sure it was worth it if he popped back to life in its stomach and redissolved. Plus, he didn't really want to experience the, er, last bit of digestion.

Nope, Harry wasn't in for being eaten this year.

As he wandered off into his own thoughts of Hogwarts: Death Trap Edition, the two boys across from him cautiously made quiet conversation, to avoid drawing the crazy one out of his reverie.

When Harry came to, Draco was buying Ron a pack of chocolate quills over the Weasley boy's weak protests, having already thrown the corned beef out the window.

_Still a little snobby, _Harry reassured himself. _And little to no respect for our environment._

The door opened and shut, and a gangly Hufflepuff girl pressed herself against it just before two thuds and two quill points poked through the door on either side of her head. She eyed the points warily and shifted to the side just as a third quill thunked into and partially through the door where her head had been the moment before.

With a sigh of relief she yanked the door back open and ran down the hallway.

Moments passed and a set of textbooks flew after her.

Ron summed up the situation eloquently.

"..What."

"That could have been an _accio _gone horribly, horribly wrong," Harry mused aloud, "Or a charm meant to return lost objects dialed up to eleven."

"What's dialed up?" Draco whispered to Ron.

"I don't know if _he _knows," Ron replied in an absent-minded hush.

"I do have working ears, though," Harry informed them, and the boys quieted with strangely similar expressions. Getting up on a whim, he left the two to fail at their blood feud in favor of following the trail of destruction down the hallway. As he was walking away, he heard a familiar voice introduce herself as Hermione Granger and Draco's polite greeting in return.

Harry shook his head; what was the world coming to?

For some time, he wandered along the path of school supplies embedded in the walls and floor, stopping occasionally to admire a particularly large bouquet of quills or read the title of a book. However, it appeared the Hufflepuff girl's stamina outmatched the previously inanimate army, as the trail died off without a student in sight. Harry could hear the muffled murmurs of gentle conversation and the laughter of students that served as part of the constant backdrop on the Hogwarts express, but no pounding feet or panted breaths.

Glancing around the area, Harry searched for clues that could lead him further but found nothing. It seemed Hogwarts students, unlike Dark wizards, didn't take the time to add dramatic foreshadowing or hints to their crime scenes. He could dig out his Parental Skills: Forensics mental kit, he supposed, standing at the end of the destruction looking down the unblemished hallway.

Just as he thought it, the train came to a stop.

He scrabbled after the edge of that last thought but it fluttered away, exposing the underlying worry. Very deliberately not thinking about it during the train ride over hadn't made the possibility go away. If the sneakoscope on his birthday had been any indication, his entire soul could potentially be seen as a "foreign influence" by the elder Lily's detection system - or affiliation test, as she called it.

As the compartment doors opened, following a slight pause at the sight of the hallways, students poured out in a steady flow that swept Harry along with it. He wished he knew if the enchantment had been done the boats and carriages, a door or stone of Hogwarts, or the Sorting Hat itself. On the one hand, teachers and staff didn't use the boats and carriages, barring Hagrid, and the same could be said of the Sorting Hat. However, if the enchantment was on the Sorting Hat, it would be simple enough to require a compulsory "visit" with the relic before allowing anyone back into the building for the year. Could the Sorting Hat even be taken outside Hogwarts, though?

Harry had his doubts.

It was more likely a stone, or several stones, near the entryways of Hogwarts had had a ward or enchantment tied into them. If that were the case and they picked up on his transplanted status, Harry might be bottled up and shipped to the Ministry to "free" him. When that didn't work, Harry was confident the Ministry would do what it did best and try to make him disappear. Whether that was a cell in Azkaban no one knew was filled or a bubble in the Department of Mysteries was anyone's guess, but neither of them would be any fun while he waited out his life.

Best case scenario, the magic would be looking for traces of Voldemort soul/magic, which he knew had been cleansed from his system back in his youth, and declare him to be harmless and uncontrolled. If only he'd known sooner, a good fealty oath might have disguised whatever other influences there would be on his mind, as it could override them. But who…?

Having been mindlessly brought along with the crowd, Harry found himself laying eyes on Hogwarts lake for the first time in this body, and froze.

Not fearing death didn't mean he had _no _fear.

How likely was it that he could slip away unnoticed?  
"Come along, Harry," Hermione said, having appeared beside him at some point in his contemplations, "The man said we need to get in the boats."

"The _half-giant_," someone corrected, and was ignored.

"Did I tell you my name?" Harry asked, faintly, as Hermione dragged him towards his doom.

"I told her," said another voice, and Harry managed not to jump at the reappearance of Draco and Ron at his other side. The Malfoy scion shrugged, "She was planning to find you and ask if you'd found Neville Longbottom's toad."

"_Neville_," Hermione interjected, "Honestly, I was ever so excited to learn that he and his family defeated that evil wizard that wanted people like me dead, but even I didn't refer to him by his full name after meeting him."

"Did you all meet him, then," Harry stated rather than asked, staring towards his impending captivity as if through the rock and cliffs that blocked the view from this side of the lake. Maybe if he used his feeble occlumency to shield himself, it wouldn't figure him out. Or maybe… One of the main differences between himself and the original Harry was his fully matured mind (Common Sense was torn between laughing and crying). Having already ignored Draco's affirmative response and subsequent explanatory rambling, Harry didn't bother waiting for Draco's current sentence to end before stopping in his tracks to point his wand at his own temple, "_Confundus._"

Disappointingly, his magic reserves were not enough to fuel the Confounding Charm, and Harry had not exactly taken into account his altered neurochemistry. A light buzzing settled over his mind like a blanket.

"That didn't relax me at all," he complained over the internal noise to his wide-eyed companions, fabricating a cover story that would fly for his use of the spell, "Those red-haired twins I met in the alley lied to me!"

"You're speaking a little loudly," Draco pointed out while Ron began examining his shoes rather than meet anyone's eyes, ears changing tone to offset his hair.

"What did you just do?" Hermione exclaimed, "Was that the Confounding Charm? Why would you think that was supposed to relax you!"

Ron took control of the situation with surprising swiftness, still avoiding his fellow first years' gazes and not saying anything about _red-haired twins_, "We're going to miss the boats, if we don't get a move on."

As Draco didn't quite care for Harry's wellbeing in the first place and Hermione was still a stickler for the rules (bless inter-universe continuities), Ron's distraction was vaguely successful, allowing Hermione to continue quietly scolding a near stranger about trying spells he didn't know as they walked towards the boats, gripping his wand arm this time in a sensible moment of foresight.

For his part, Harry endured the rambled scoldings with Draco and Ron's conversation providing the background all the way to the boat and across part of the lake. It was a little harder to think than before, so he knew he'd had at least a tiny bit of success at masking the difference between his adult thoughts and little Harry's. The brain lesions and damage could be partially attributed to the dementor exposure in his vulnerable youth, but the extent would be far beyond any seen outside of Kiss victims. This was likely due to the fact that he actually was one. Either way, there could be something he could do to explain that away as well.

Whether it was the buzzing or the suicidal tendencies at fault, Harry deliberately didn't duck at Hagrid's warning and clocked his head against the rock, followed with a fall into the lake. _While for this purpose, I'm glad they didn't include them, _he thought, sinking slowly in the water, _I can't help but wonder why there aren't cushioning charms woven into the sheer wall of rock our children and further descendents must duck under to gain entry to Hogwarts at _eleven _years old. _Harry calmly inhaled lake water, filling his lungs as he went under and facilitating the drowning process to reset the brain damage to pre-self-inflicted trauma. That supposed head injury should help explain what was already there. Plus, a reputation for clumsiness would partially mask any unfortunate accidents in which he may find himself.

_Yes_, he thought as the darkness closed in and his lungs burned and faltered, _That'll do for reasoning._

Maybe this time he wouldn't wake up.

-x-

The tentacle wrapped around his frame when he reanimated didn't so much surprise him as exasperate him. With the buzzing gone, he was beginning to question the wisdom of this most recent death, but there was little he could do but roll with it, now.

His reasoning still stood, even if the risk involved was a little higher than he'd want. _Think of it as a first test_, Harry comforted himself as the tentacle breached the water's surface and he spat water, greedily gulping air as substitute, _I don't have any better ideas to get past that detection system, anyway._

"You alright, Harry?" Hagrid was asking, having turned his boat around at the splash, and Hermione's shriek of his name.

"Great," Harry gasped, "Hit my head. Blacked out. Squid got me."

"We'll have to get you looked at, then," Hagrid mused as the squid deposited a soaking Harry into Hagrid's boat, which gave an ominous creak. He sounded like Harry remembered from his actual childhood, and he found himself gazing nostalgically at the man before recalling his purpose.

"I feel a little dizzy," Harry croaked, and feinted a sway that had him grabbing at the side of the boat as if for balance, "Maybe a lot dizzy." He'd have to remember not to slip up and speak naturally, since he should be a little hoarse from that much water. Poppy Pomphrey never seemed to notice his malnourishment or past injuries, after all, and most times didn't even bother with a diagnosis spell except for sensitive or difficult to see spots, for which the brain was both. Hopefully that would take the brunt of her focus and he could just fake the rest of his symptoms. He did have witnesses to his little incident, after all, so there was no reason he'd be faking. Except, of course… This situation.

Hagrid's little boat bobbed ahead, accelerating so as to catch up with the others, and this time Harry ducked in time with the burly man as they passed under the rock face.

"We should really put some cushioning charms on this thing," Hagrid mused coming out the other side.

"That's what I was thinking," Harry rasped, and Hagrid patted him a little too forcefully on the back, bringing up a bit of water Harry hadn't known lingered. Huh. Maybe he was becoming inured to dying, or pain. Thoughtfully, he dug a fingernail into his forearm and winced. _No, pain still hurts._

Hagrid, thankfully, was looking at the other students during this little stunt, "Oy, you there! Siddown! No rocking the boat!" He appeared to hear a response Harry couldn't as he continued after a pause, "Don't you whinge about it! The squid don't catch every man overboard!"

He did seem slightly more eloquent than usual, and Harry tilted his head slightly at the old man, which Hagrid _did _catch.

"Oh, you're wondering about my size, are you?" Hagrid chuckled, and leaned in as if sharing a secret, "Well, see, I'm half-giant." He winked, and Harry wasn't sure exactly how to respond, so he just smiled in awkward silence until Hagrid turned back to supervising the other boats.

Well, he was certainly more open about that. What other changes… No, Harry knew he was just distracting himself from the affiliation test the elder Lily had in place. If only she'd thought to mention it, say, _before _the moment he was stepping onto the train. Harry was willing to admit his current plan was not the smartest, but he was short on time. Even a week ago would have been splendid. Maybe the whole fealty oath thing wouldn't work, since he couldn't quite trust anyone magical in this... Wait.

Harry had an idea.

As soon as he stepped onto solid ground, Harry broke from the group, ignoring Hagrid's "Oy!" and stalking up to the nearest castle wall.

"Henceforth," he said, holding up his wand with one hand and placing the other against the cold stone, "I, Harry James Potter, do so swear myself by magic to give fealty to none but Hogwarts, to work for the safety of Her students, and to fight to keep Her walls standing, so long as I live within them. May my word be true, forevermore."

He'd taken this oath before, when his family had preemptively taken refuge in the castle during a minor dark insurgency that had had the potential to go Voldemort-level bad, so he was unsurprised a violet light flared, accepting the oath until such a time as he would no longer return to the castle as a boarder.

"You are very strange," Draco informed him from the edge of the staring crowd.

"I was overcome by the castle's majesty," Harry sniffed haughtily, "I would expect a _Malfoy _to understand the-"

"Not working this time," Draco interrupted, actually putting his hands over his ears. The young Ron beside him patted his shoulder consolingly.

"Harry," Hagrid had lumbered over and taken a knee beside the boy, "That were a very serious oath you just took. Very brave of you, but _very _serious." A pause, "Especially when you just smacked your noggin." A longer pause, "This is my fault, isn't it." He glanced up at the castle, "Minerva's going to kill me for letting a concussed sprog wander off and pledge himself to the castle." Shaking his head he stood, "Well, what's done is done." Without warning, he lifted Harry in one arm, as one would hold a bouquet of flowers, and started back up the path toward the castle doors, "Come along, first years."

Harry was surrounded on all sides by the thick brown fabric of Hagrid's coat, and dangerously close to one of the biggest pockets, which gaped open threateningly, dragon pin on its edge glinting in the light. "Uh, Hagrid?" He slipped a little closer to the pocket and his voice gained the edge of a squeak, "Hagrid!"

The called for man glanced down and readjusted Harry so he couldn't slip into the pocket, "Sorry, Harry. Good thing you warned me or you might have never come out." A chuckle followed these ominous words.

Staring incredulously up at the cascade of hair and beard that was all Harry could see of Hagrid's face, he stayed very, _very _still for the remainder of the trip. The other first years were dropped off with Professor McGonagall for the Sorting, and Harry was whisked away to the Hospital Wing.

Madam Pomfrey was the same as she ever was. Clucking in disapproval over his foolishness and taking out a line of potions he would need to consume as the story unfolded. When she cast a spell about his head, though, she paused, and the energy she carried around like a cape fell away.

"Oh, my dear child," she breathed, glancing at Harry worriedly to check if he'd heard the unintentional pity that had slipped from her lips. Harry continued to examine the ceiling. There were a few variations in the dips and cracks from his own youth. She gingerly smoothed the hair on his head, garnering his attention, and said at a normal volume, "I need to speak with some people now, sweetie. Stay here, okay? Don't move too quickly."

Harry nodded slowly, mindful of the concussion he should have.

Dumbledore and Snape walked briskly into the Hospital Wing and into Pomfrey's office a minute later without so much as a "how do you do," clearly having been summoned by Floo or some other communication device as Pomfrey had yet to emerge.

Nudging off his shoes, Harry edged quietly over near the door. He could only hear the occasional phrase from the other side.

"...Most of it's old…No…" Pomfrey was saying.

Snape replied in that soft, dark voice of his that seemed uniquely designed to be unable to overhear the meaning of. Dumbledore put in something with the word dementor, which Harry only picked out because he was listening for it.

Pomfrey kept her voice low, but was unsurprisingly the easiest to hear of the three, "And that _oath_ on top of….classes with the...sure?"

Still, that didn't mean it made any sense.

The conversation dragged on, but with the skills of a century behind him, Harry could almost feel the sense of conclusion and scrambled as silently as he could back to the bed, just as the door to the office opened.

Somberly, the three professors exited, Snape's eyes catching on something beneath the bed before raising an eyebrow at Harry. A glance down, and Harry realized his shoes were still off. Of all the… Swiftly, he dropped his feet back into the shoes, hopefully before the other two professors noticed anything amiss.

"Harry, I'm not sure how the healers at St. Mungo's missed this," _Probably because, like all Healers, they only look for what they think will be there, _Harry mused as Pomfrey continued, "Your family probably told you dementors were involved in the attack in which you were kidnapped, but it looks like they had more of an effect than we thought. It seems your brain is… Your brain is hurt, Harry, do you understand?" At Harry's nod, she took a deep breath, "Alright. From what we can tell, it might be difficult for you to make decisions; is that true, Harry?" She was saying his name quite a lot. _Focus, _Common Sense rolled imaginary eyes.

Harry scratched his chin in pseudo-thought, "Not _difficult_, but a lot of times I think maybe I should have done something else." Harry wished, not for the first time in this timeline, that his own grandchildren hadn't been quite so influenced by Great-Aunt Hermione. Maybe then he'd be better able to judge if he was actually speaking correctly for his age.

"We expected that, so we… We have something to help you decide whether you really _should _do things like take an- that oath." Pomfrey produced a little bracelet, made of a silvery material, "This is designed for people who… have been exposed to dementors for a long time." Harry was fairly certain she meant, _had been in Azkaban_. "It will tell you if what you're doing makes sense or not."

_Really_? That was a fairly complicated enchantment, if it were true. "Will it tell you, too?" Harry asked curiously, "How does it judge what makes sense or not? Is it based on the school rules? Or the perception of the person who made it?"

"I see your curiosity remains undampened," Dumbledore looked over his half moon spectacles with a twinkle in his eyes. Blinking away the imagined sunspots, Harry smiled as innocently as he could, and the twinkle increased.

"It won't report to us; it's not built for that," Pomfrey assured him, ignoring his other questions with the ease of practice, and held it forward, "Here, we'll put it on and you can try it out for a while. If you don't like it, you can come back and we'll try something else."

Harry held out a wrist, and the bracelet resized around it to prevent it sliding about. For now, it said _safe_ in white letters on a green background, within a small window on the watch-shaped bracelet, and he contemplated poking about with the enchantment to see each effect. As he thought it, there was a sound like something spinning, and a new placard appeared in the window. "No," he read off the orange background, and snorted, "Fine, then." It spun about to _safe_ again. That could get bothersome if he was sneaking around. He'd have to silence it. The placard spun about to another green background, _sensible._

_No, it is not, _Common Sense grumbled, _it's circumventing the rules._

"I see it's… working," Pomfrey decided, and returned to more serious topics, "Harry, we can't do anything about the... About your brain being hurt, except try to work around it, because it's too old, but if you ever need to talk to someone, especially if you're unsure whether or not you should do something, you can come to any of us here, or your Head of House."

Harry nodded.

"I'll be contacting your parents about this."

_Joy, _Harry thought.

_Hahahaha, _read the bracelet.

_Backlash, _Common Sense finished smugly.

"Now, I'm afraid you've missed the official Sorting," Dumbledore smiled, raising a hand just in time for Fawkes to appear and drop the Sorting Hat into it before vanishing in a burst of flame, "So we'll be determining your House and doing the Affiliation Test here."

_In front of _four _members of staff, _Common Sense put in, smugness replaced with stress in a heartbeat.

Harry was fairly certain this was his own fault.

* * *

**So even if he doesn't get through the Affiliation Test intact, what House do you think Harry will end up in?**

**Whoever guesses correctly before the next chapter will get a shout out in the author's note! Woooo poorman's priiiize :D**


	9. Chapter 9

**Disclaimer: I do not own or profit from Harry Potter and so on.**

**Happy First of April!**

_This is all your fault, _Common Sense groaned.

_Truth, _the bracelet added.

"I hate all of you," Harry said aloud, and any quiet noises from the professors ended.

"Pardon?" Dumbledore asked, and Harry paled.

"I said that out loud, didn't I?"

The ancient wizard nodded, even as Common Sense muttered an affirmation, and Dumbledore sighed, "I had hoped it wouldn't come to this, my boy. It seems there is little we can do to fix this level of damage."

Harry waited expectantly.

"So I'm afraid I'll be using a special spell," Dumbledore continued after an appropriate dramatic pause, "I developed this on a time traveling expedition for a young man who had gone mad from splitting his soul, but unfortunately it was too weak. Keep still." Snape was beginning to get an odd look on his face and Pomfrey just seemed confused.

"Alright," Harry agreed, knowing that even if something went horribly wrong, he could just hop off the nearest tower to correct it.

Dumbledore cleared his throat and aimed his wand, "Avada-"

"NO!" Snape shouted, knocking the wand from his grasp, "NO MERCY KILLS! YOU PROMISED THAT WAS THE LAST ONE!"

"It's just a first year," Dumbledore argued, "He'll have a terrible life if I don't do this."

"I agree with the Headmaster," Harry said, and was ignored.

"Think of the children!" Pomfrey cried for no apparent reason, collapsing to the floor with her head in her hands.

"ALBUS NOOOOOOOOO," Snape was still shouting, and the two wizards engaged in a limp-wristed slap fight.

"Well, all that's left is to break the fourth wall," Harry walked over to the screen, looking out at the readers, "Happy April Fools' Day."


	10. Chapter 10

**To clarify, chapter 9 was an April's Fools prank left up for the sake of my sadistic personality. **

**Chapter 10, here, is SUPER SHORT and picks up where 8 left off.**

**Disclaimer: I am neither claiming ownership nor making money off of Harry Potter and co.**

**Congratulations are due to Goldrune09, Dedicated4reading, and partially to GinHanelle for your guesses on the House of on Harry James Potter!**

**-o-**

**_Last time:_**_ Harry was fairly certain this was his own fault._

_This should, technically, be better than the Great Hall,_ Harry mused, trying to calm himself as Dumbledore plopped the Sorting Hat on his head.

There was a pause.

"Clean!" It called, and Harry's thought process froze.

"Wait, the Affiliation test is the Sorting Hat?" He asked before he could stop himself.

"No, it's a matrix of charms on the Hat," Dumbledore twinkled.

Well, as long as the good mood lasted… "What did it look for?"

"Mind control or the Dark Mark," he replied cheerily, and Harry felt like slamming his head against the floor until his skull shattered across the ground. That'd probably be less painful than this moment. He'd overestimated. He couldn't believe that he'd actually _overestimated_ the stupid spell. _Foreign influence_, his foot. The Headmaster was saying, "...of course, with Voldemort gone, most of his followers, unwilling or no, have already been put away, so you don't have to worry…"

Had he just wasted all of that, admittedly last minute, effort?

_Yes_, Common Sense hummed, smugness in full force. He got the image of a peacock strutting around over the remnants of his ability to use logic. _And now you _have _to help out any students in danger until the day you leave Hogwarts to live elsewhere._

"Well, then." At least it was just until summer break, if the oath held true in the same way across dimensions.

"Now for your House, my boy," Dumbledore poked Harry's nose, in a more weirdly affectionate move than Harry remembered from Dumbledore. Come to think of it, everyone seemed a little more relaxed. All four staff members (and Harry was including the Sorting Hat) were less… uptight. And since one of them was Snape, that was saying something. Didn't Dumbledore just say Voldemort was _gone_? Could it be this universe didn't know about Voldemort's horcruxes?

...Or someone might have taken care of them already.

Either way, there was an edge missing, a readiness he hadn't really noted in his previous life until he saw them without it. It was… nice.

Potentially a deadly mistake, but nice.

As seemed to have become the norm for things poking about his head, there was first a great burst of pain before the Hat readjusted its approach. Harry hoped the wincing wasn't obvious.

_Well, well, this is interesting, _a voice sarcastically whispered in his head.

For a moment, he couldn't place whether it was his common sense or not. The Sorting Hat- that's what it was.

Harry's thought seemed to distract the Sorting Hat. _Hello, again,_ the voice said with a sort of prod at the part of him that was still dissociated from the whole, and his Common Sense gave a meek, _Hello._

Irrationally, he wondered...

_I can see you're wondering if I'll be revealing your secrets, _the voice sounded bored, _I will take this moment to remind you that children already on a much darker path than yours have passed beneath my brim with nary a peep from me. To more important things… _

"Hopefully not Slytherin," he whispered, aware that the staff in the room could probably hear him, though they were politely pretending they were not listening. That sorting would only complicate things.

Snape couldn't suppress a quiet snort, however.

Wow, the spy was slipping in this no-Voldemort mindset.

_You're… Fairly cunning for one as mad as you are-_

"Am _not…_ that," Harry finished lamely, not wanting to say "mad" out loud.

-_I am aware of that delusion, yes. As I was _saying, _there _is _cunning in your madness, but your implementation is rash. _The Sorting Hat's whispery mind voice was almost dreary as it continued, _Not much love of learning, even if you're in pursuit of a specific type of knowledge. To face death as you do, not once but over and over, is a kind of braveness… or a kind of insanity. As it stands, everything you've been doing so far has been for a singular goal- reuniting with your original family- which makes placing you much easier. Hard work due to loyalty, as it were._

The rip in the brim opened and the Hat shouted to the empty infirmary, "Hufflepuff!"

That hadn't even been considered last time.

Granted, there was a lifetime between now and then. Still, that was a bit of a turn around. Harry actually felt a little disappointed in himself. Oh, every time a child or grandchild got on the Hogwarts express, he'd tell them he'd love them no matter which House they got into, but he'd always secretly hoped it wasn't Hufflepuff: House of Cuddliness and Spare Parts. His luck had held out with only the occasional Ravenclaw among the flood of Slytherins and Gryffindors that was his family, but to be Sorted _himself_ into the House of Duffers?

Harry wanted to pull the Hat slowly down over his face until he went wherever the sword of Gryffindor was stored.

Instead, he played it off as best he could, handing the Hat back to Dumbledore and smiling cheerily, "As the alternative to Slytherin, I'm for it."

"Now, Harry, Slytherin isn't so bad," Dumbledore chided gently, but his lips were twitching towards a smile.

"I think, Headmaster, you mean that Slytherin is _just as good _as the other Noble Houses," Snape muttered.

"Yes, yes," Dumbledore agreed chipperly without any sign of actually listening to what a resigned Snape had said. He tousled Harry's messy hair with an aged hand, "Now it'll be off to the feast with you. I think you'll catch dessert… and maybe the school song." The professors winced reflexively.

"Headmaster," Pomfrey interjected, "he is…" A glance at the patient listening calmly to her every word, "_injured_. That oath, as well, could be problematic..."

"Nonsense," Dumbledore waved at the bracelet grandly, "he's taken measures to help himself along, and a little brain damage never hurt anyone. Why, one of our finest Headmasters the school has ever seen had a rather severe lobotomy incident halfway through his term-"

An indignant expression crossed the nurse's face, "Headmaster, the school was run by _House Elves _for three years-"

"-and it was the very best three years Hogwarts has had in terms of mortality rates and grade averages," Dumbledore concluded, adding with a crooked finger, "Come along, Harry." Hopping off the bed quickly, Harry obeyed, ignoring the bracelet which returned to the _safe _placard it started on as he did so.

They walked in silence three quarters of the way there, while Harry tried to follow Dumbledore rather than lead the way. If he just pretended he were playing follow-the-leader wit his grandchildren instead of walking to the Great Hall, he might be able to keep his feet from betraying his inexplicable knowledge of the castle layout.

When Dumbledore stopped abruptly in a largish room, Harry made a quick show of looking about.

"Where is everyone?" he asked, and Dumbledore blinked owlishly before comprehension dawned.

"Ah, this isn't the Great Hall just yet, my boy," the headmaster chuckled, "I merely wanted a word or two before unleashing you on your unsuspecting classmates."

Well, that wasn't terrifying at all. "What words?"

"Be yourself," Dumbledore placed a hand on Harry's head, "I know a little of what it's like to grow up different; I had a sister who struggled with what some may think of as even greater disadvantages. As it is, you will face challenges your classmates will not understand, but you will have your own strengths, Harry. They will show in time. Never fear showing your real self; your weaknesses will draw help, your strengths, alliances, and you will draw friendship all on your own." Seriousness receding, Dumbledore ruffled his hair and resumed their journey, "Especially in Hufflepuff." The boy who might have fulfilled the prophecy smiled up at the headmaster who first heard it, eyes squinted shut with the force of said smile.

He didn't want Dumbledore to sense the half-mocking, half-hysteric laughter in his thoughts through perception _or _legilimency.

To Hufflepuff, we go.

"Oh, yes," Dumbledore broke the returned silence at the doors to the Great Hall, "I'll be seeing you tonight to repel the daily Acromantula raids on the granary at seven."

"What-" Harry began, but the doors were opening and Dumbledore was moving again, in a beeline for the Hufflepuff table, and Harry scrambled to catch up with the longer-limbed man. _The oath, _Common Sense reminded him, _you idiot._ "Right," Harry breathed aloud as Dumbledore introduced him to his House prefects and settled him with his classmates before sweeping up to the head table.

He didn't pay too much attention to it until a familiar face he hadn't expected caught his eye and he plopped himself down beside them. "Draco!" he crowed, grabbing the boy's hand and pumping it, "Congratulations on making Hufflepuff!"

The other first year seemed taken aback until he recognized who had just assaulted him (and was leaning into the raspberry jam to do so). Draco made an ugly face of unhappiness, "You're a Hufflepuff, too?"

"Not really," Harry returned to his own seat and slathered a piece of ham in the jam from his shirt sleeve, "but the Sorting Hat couldn't just make me Headmaster right away, could it?" He waggled the knife he'd stolen from his neighbor at Draco remonstratively, "Baby steps." Harry cherished these little silences. It let him wonder what exactly the oath and the Headmaster expected him to do tonight against a raiding party of spiders the size of dogs.

Or bigger.

Harry wasn't entirely sure how big baby Acromantulas were and he doubted the adolescents had any trouble at all with the less magical creatures in the forest. Only the desperate or weak would resort to ransacking the Hogwarts _granary_. Were they sucking the juice out of the fruits there?

_A pineapple wept over the desiccated remains of his lover, a kindly pear, and swore eternal vengeance against the foul eight-legged beastie that had stolen her from him. Meanwhile, a Hogwarts house elf entered stage left and began mumbling about pineapple upside down cake. _Harry shook the image away distractedly; perhaps _granary _was a misleading term that meant, _place where all food is stored_, and there would be juicy meats and/or carcasses in storage there.

He nodded decisively to himself and resumed eating, unaware of the multitude of polite introductions and friendly questions he'd just ignored into submission. Draco, alone, was reluctantly impressed.

Speaking of… "So _why _are you in Hufflepuff, again?" Harry prodded aloud, following the question with a physical reiteration of the action into Draco's side.

"That's stupidly rude and personal," Draco informed him and Harry prodded him again. Physically speaking. With his spoon. Draco flailed uselessly, and huffed, "My father! That's why!" He eyed Harry maliciously, _daring _him not to understand, and slowly bringing up a spoon of his own.

"We exist, too, you know," a reddish-haired Hufflepuff boy wearing a carved wooden dragon pendant across the table said flatly, resting his cheek against his hand so it squished and distorted his face. Heh, Harry used to squish his children's cheeks like that. They would complain he was embarrassing them in front of their kids. He would reply that the torment would end only when he did. Which, Harry supposed, had been made a lie now by forces beyond his control. The boy looked down at the spoons they were brandishing at each other and then back up at their faces, "Did you even _notice _us all introducing ourselves?"

"Of course," Harry snorted dismissively. His bracelet spun to something orange at the lie, but he ignored it.

"So, who are we?" the boy challenged, gesturing between himself and Susan Bones. Harry vaguely remembered the boy's name to be Something-With-a-Z Smith.

"Hufflepuffs," Harry answered smugly, and Draco's spoon wavered as he snorted back laughter. Not being a complete idiot, Harry took advantage of the lapse to prod Draco once more.

"Oi," Draco poked him back, so Harry prodded him again. And so forth. Something-With-a-Z was quickly forgotten as the war devolved into the two simply holding their spoons against one another's sides while they ate.

Dumbledore stood as dinner wound down and desserts and food alike began to disappear from the tables.

"Before our rendition of the school song-" Snape actually put a hand over his eyes, as if shielding himself from the very thought, and the Headmaster continued, unfazed, "I have a few pieces of doddering old man advice to pass on. Though Voldemort and his rebels' time may be over, we must remember the uselessness of violence," he paused, and his eyes flickered to a few specific points on all four tables Harry couldn't connect, due to their brevity, "in the pursuit of our ideals. Regardless of where you've come from tonight, right now we are one. We are all children of Hogwarts, and to keep her standing, we must keep our unity in the face of what may seem like dividing differences." He smiled, and clapped his hands together, "Mr. Filch requested of me to tell you that you are _all_ the same to _him_, with a few descriptors I leave out for the sake of brevity-" (An upper year snorted, adding, "and decency.") "-and must obey the updated list of forbidden items nailed to the door and walls outside his office. I would also add, for our first years," he clearly glanced at the Gryffindor table, "and as a reminder for some upper years, that the Forbidden Forest is similarly off-limits unless on the direct invitation of a treatied species."

Harry lifted his spoon from Draco's side, "What's a treatied species?"

Draco did not return the favor, and instead treated Harry to a particularly scathing look, "A species we have a treaty with." Something-With-a-Z seemed similarly affected by Harry's ignorance, and they shared a bonding moment over their mutual disdain.

"A treaty of nonaggression," ah, like that springing up between Draco and Something-With-a-Z, right now, "and usually including land rights," Something-With-a-Z sneered from across the table, but before he could condescend any further Dumbledore was plowing ahead through his fellow professors' blatant dislike to announce the beginning of the school song.

"And here… we… go!" The Headmaster conducted the cacophony merrily, waving his arms almost at random as he appeared to hum something quietly under the din.

"Oh, my aunt told me about this," Susan exclaimed happily, "It's so creative."

"The school song does actually _have _a written tune," Something-With-a-Z whinged, his hands over his ears even as Draco mumbled along and Susan wholeheartedly began singing to the tune of a wizarding folk-song about a cauldron that refused to boil.

"Prove it," Harry suggested, enjoying toeing the edge of his oath to protect Hogwarts students by prompting an addition to the musical mess. The bracelet had spun to something red, and if it were possible, he'd say his Common Sense was holed up somewhere deep in his mind where auditory signals couldn't reach.

Something-With-a-Z, glaring all the while with hands still clasped to his ears, did just what he'd suggested. Quite loudly. And off key.

At least Dumbledore was happy.

"Maybe I can teach people the right tune," Something-With-a-Z muttered to himself as the chaos tapered off, leaving the Weasley twins singing to something funeral-y, "and then next year, everyone I've taught will sing the same melody, and if I keep getting the first years every new term, and teach _them _to teach others, someday the Headmaster will ask for that song and all the people who know it will drown out the ones who don't."

Susan looked amused and put a hand on his shoulder, "Or you could just _not _do that."

He pointed at her in unspoken agreement, unwilling to come out of his partial fugue state until the last singers were done.

"It's not that bad," Draco shrugged, "My f- someone I know used to actually get nightmares about it, so I thought it'd be worse."

Susan giggled. "I think Zachariah might have a nightmare tonight, too."

"Nightmares aren't funny," Draco replied flatly, and Susan flushed.

"Sorry," she stammered, "I forgot your father… Just, sorry."

Draco grunted, which was probably going to be the end of things if Harry hadn't butted in.

"Draco accepts your heartfelt apology and extends the hand," Harry pulled the other boy's hand out and across the table, "of friendship." The compromise he'd given himself about little Malfoy was such: as annoying as he possibly could be while remaining anywhere on the range between harmless and helpful.

"First years!" A prefect called, standing up from the table, even as they were echoed at the other three House tables by their counterparts, "Follow me!"

Harry stood, wondered what the time was, and realized from Dumbledore's significant look and subsequent wading into the crowd towards the door that it may just be Spider Time.

Spider Splatting?

Acromantula Aggravating.

Eh.

The bracelet was lingering on something red-orange.

_Too late for that, _Common Sense murmured, resigned to their fate of discovery or death.

"Maybe I'm an idiot savant," Harry protested, opening up a third possibility in that pessimistic viewpoint and aiming for a fourth, "Or I'll be totally fine." Not a single iota of persuasion could have been squeezed from that statement.

"...What?" Susan was looking at him oddly, alone, Draco and Something-With-a- _yes_, he knew his name was Zachariah- having jumped ship already, placidly standing near the prefect.

"I've a place I need to be," Harry explained without explaining, hooking a thumb over his shoulder in a random direction, "to do a thing I need to do."

Susan offered, "Do you need any help?" She nodded at Harry's quick refusal and made herself scarce with a, "See you in the common room."

_Hufflepuffs, _Harry thought to himself, and found his Common Sense humming agreement, for once.

The bracelet turned to something green, and Harry glanced down.

_Hufflepuff,_ it read, with a little white arrow pointing Harry's direction.

"Oh, sod off," Harry told it, and made his way toward the front door.

**-0-**

**So what's with the child endangerment at Hogwarts, am I right? This is like the airplane peanuts joke of the HP fandom.**

**Well. Promises, promises. Mine to you is that the next chapter will be longer. As soon as I write it. D:**


End file.
